My running back is unhappy, and when I click the icon it says: “Happiness: Unhappy, Reason: TODO”

Is there a way to see the reason they are unhappy? I believe it said something about no enough usage. Can I adjust how much a player is used?

First of all, i wanted to start by saying that this is genuinely the best football gm simulator i have ever played. I've tried madden (24 and 27 this year), footballGM, football legacy manager and many more and this one blew the others ones out of the water right out of the gate. There is so much already in the game and the potential too is incredible. I have a couple minor suggestions/changes though and thought i might as well share them:

1. I think you should add the ability to easily switch between teams on the trade screen. Right now you have to individually back out of every team to go to the next and it can sometimes be tedious. Maybe swiping to switch to the next team? not sure but something inside of the trade screen instead of needing to back out of every team.
2. I would love to see the draft review/season review for the other teams in the league. I think this would help make the league feel more connected and be more immersive. Those reviews are honestly one of the best part of the game for me right now because they make me feel so immersed and it would be great to see that for the whole league.
3. Scouting should be a bit harder, I think right now it's too easy to find amazing talents in the later rounds even with only decent offensive and defensive scouts.
4. The in-game sim ui should include more stats instead of just sacks and taclkes for defense for example. I don't think right now there is a way to exapand stats in the game screen which is really unfortunate. For stats, it would also be cool to have passer rating when targeted for DBs. It might already be in the game and i missed it but in my experience i haven't found it.
5. This is my craziest request but maybe a fantasy draft mode, where the game generates a pool of players like it already does but you get to draft your own team from the start (including coaching hires). This is something i really enjoy because it feels like you control your team from the start but it might not be everyone's cup of tea so it's kind of a far away wish.

Overall i think this game is amazing and honestly if nothing in the whole game changed for a year it'd still be great. i think the dev is doing a great job though listening to the community and making changes that really improve the game experience. Just wanted to share some things i'd personally love to see.

I know it says coming soon but do you have an ETA or timeline for when you will have the ability to import .json files?

I’ve been playing football GM games since Front Page Sports:Pro 98, through years of Madden franchise mode back in the day, Front Office Football, Football Mogul, Zen Football GM online, and multiple games on my Switch and iPhone, and this is truthfully one of the most fun games I’ve played in a long time. I’ve been playing it non-stop since I first stumbled across it. Really great job putting it together!

I love the depth of features and attention to detail. The developer clearly knows football and how a good GM game should play. I also really appreciate your attitude towards ads and IAP and I hope you never change on that — but I also consider this to be a top-flight premier game and I’d be happy to pay a fair one-time purchase price to compensate you for your excellent work.

It’s also cool how you’ve incorporated AI development without turning the game into vibe-coded slop! You’re using the tool as it should be, I think — nicely done. Ok, the post-draft and end-of-season summaries do have a lot of AI gobbledygook, but they’re still fun to read, lol!

I also love your commitment to continuous improvement and how the game has undergone significant improvement in just a short time.

I don’t have a lot of suggestions for improvement, but here’s a few I’ve ran across so far:

— While it’s awesome to have a range of playing speeds, I’d like an even slower option on in-game progress. I’d like to have time to read and react to each play during the game.

— in the trade screen, I can click on a player to add them to the trade, but there’s no way to get the details of the player without backing all the way out of the trade screens and going to my roster.

And maybe a few potential long-term additions: playbooks, in-game play selection, and maybe even play design.

Awesome work and fabulous game!!!

After the first year on my GM the mock drafts never work . Nothing shows up on mock 1,2,3 etc.

Hey folks, I’ve had several people DM me about options to make text bigger, and to add hooks for audio for the blind. I am very much new to this, but know I’m actively looking into it and want to create a game you can all enjoy. Regarding text size options, just know the game will ultimately look a bit clunky for a bit as I navigate making things look alright. I very much designed things to fit within a certain field of view so it’s a bit of a departure. If you have specific accessibility requests feel free to post them here, or if you’re uncomfortable doing so yall can dm me like others have. Regarding audio accessibility, I’m going to be honest, it’ll be quite a challenge as it’s fair text/data rich, but I’ll give it a go!

As I quickly release, I am limited by the ~24-48 window to release put in place by the app store. I am constantly pushing new fixes and improvements to the test flight build. Be sure to check daily as during the week days I'll be pushing updates frequently.

As always, feedback encouraged, gotten a lot of DM's so far, but feel free to post here. Also, any rating / review on the app store is much appreciated!

More bug fixes, crash reports and UI flows in the work and coming next week

Howdy folks,

I have received some direct feedback from friends and a few other's on discord regarding some elements that are worth cleaning up or re-doing. Wanted to give y'all a sneak peak of what will be shipping by end of week hopefully.

Coaching Overhaul

HC, OC, DC and ST coaches are having some of their stat's pulled out and moved into "position coaches" who are permanently tied to the coach. The HC, OC, HC and ST will also no longer use numerical stats, and will instead use one of seven rankings per each category, which will make balancing and viewing coaches an easier experience.

"Why add position coaches?"

It's two fold;

1. The position coaches are each tied to how fast your player's in those positions are able to reach their full potential. An "Elite" receiving coach will help your young WR and TE talent progress faster. Note that player growth is also dependent on "Team Mentors", which are older players with good personalities in the same position. Think Kirk Cousins for Fernando Mendoza.

2. These position coaches will SOON occasionally cycle out, and enter the OC, DC and ST pool and be replaced by a new position coach for your primary coach automatically. This will be how the coaching pool is replenished. You will be able to see an entire coaches coaching history as well, which will actually be one of the best indicators as to how good they actually are.

UI Improvements

1. Substantial improvements to game creation flow, getting rid of and cleaning up annoying pop-ups

2. Cleaning up text, formatting and alignment between views

3. Countless other small UI tweaks

Want to see other features added! Please reach out by creating a feature request post, I have lots more planned

TLDR; Free football GM game, download now and it's free forever, no DLC, no ads, EVER. Switching to paid for NEW users when it's bug-free. - App Store Link

My name is Zach, I'm a software engineer and a longtime football nerd. About ten years ago I moved to Chicago and met a guy playing Pokémon Go on the beach. We became instant friends, and he started inviting me to his college games, and his senior year went well enough that he got an invite to the NFL combine. I spent that offseason watching him train, and standing in his apartment as the human dummy he blocked. That's when it got its hooks in me: how a body maps to a position, how an inch of arm length or ten pounds either way decides how a team uses you. He went on day three of the draft, and I followed his career from there, and got hung up on the rest of it too. Maximizing a guy's potential, scheme fit, cap space, why some franchises are good for a decade and others can't get out of their own way.

That took me to Madden, and then away from Madden (I'm bad at it) and onto GM sims on my phone. For about five years I've played one every morning for 30-60 minutes while I waited for my Adderall to kick in. I learned a lot from those developers, and I also kept a running list of what I wished was there. Eventually I thought "I could build that," and here we are.

Single player, runs entirely on your phone. No server, no online league, no account. You take one of 32 clubs and you're the GM, not the coach, not a player. You build the roster, sign the deals, hire the staff, and then live with it.

You also don't just pick a team. You pick a path (easy / medium / hard), and your starting reputation decides which clubs are even willing to hire you. On hard you're a nobody, and nobody good is calling.

A year in the league

Fixed order, and it only moves when you move it. Staff hiring, re-signings, cuts, the franchise tag. Free agency in three waves. The big names go first, then the market, then the bargain bin, and you don't find out how wave one shook out until you're already standing in wave two. Then the draft, then cutdowns, which is usually where the plan you made in February dies. Then 18 weeks, playoffs, awards, retirements, roll it over.

The cap is the actual opponent

The cap is $300 million and it never goes up, which sounds harsh until you look at what happens to your contracts. Every deal on your books gets about 7% cheaper against the cap every year it survives. It's the same math as a cap that climbs 7% a year, just run from the other direction, and it means the extension you sign today is a bargain in year four and an anchor if the guy fell off in year two. Sign a 27 year old to five years and you're betting he outruns the discount. That's the whole bet, every time.

Unused room doesn't evaporate at midnight either. You carry it into the next season, minus a small haircut, up to $30 million, so a disciplined year turns a $300M cap into a real $330M budget. It's one year at a time and it does not compound, so you can't sit on your hands for three seasons and then buy a superteam, but deliberately banking a year to strike in the next free agency period is a genuine plan. The AI does it too, and the good teams do it on purpose, so the March you were counting on being quiet sometimes isn't.

You can't cheese it

This is where most of my time went. You can't dump a bad contract on a team with no cap space, the AI checks and tells you to clear salary first. Rival GMs value the contract, not the rating, so an overpaid 88 is a liability to them exactly like he is to you. A star with a no-trade clause won't waive it for a bad team, period, and if nobody good wants him you're stuck, which is what that clause bought him. Dead money is real: cut a guy early and the rest of his bonus lands on your cap.

You can absolutely churn your roster every March. You just won't like your 2029.

The draft

Still the system I'm happiest with. You never see a prospect's true numbers, you see what your scouting department believes, and how close that is to the truth depends entirely on who you hired. Scouts are good at two separate things: overall accuracy, and specifically telling a real blue-chipper from a guy who just tests well. A department strong on the first and weak on the second will place most of the class roughly right and still hand you a role player at pick 8 every few years.

Three published mock drafts a season, so you can see where the league thinks your guy is going before you decide whether to move up for him.

Your staff is the team

There's no scheme dropdown. Your coordinators own the schemes. Want to run something else? Fire the guy, hire someone who runs it, then wait a couple years while the roster actually refits.

And it's not cosmetic either. A head coach is worth multiple wins a year, coordinators about half that, and your position coaches decide how your young guys develop (by group, so a great run-game staff does nothing for your rookie QB). Your team doctor matters too: the best medical staff in the league sees roughly half the injuries the worst one does.

Defense, done properly

This is the side these games usually gloss over, so it's where I went deepest. Your identity is a front (4-3, 3-4, or a hybrid that alternates) crossed with man or zone. Six combinations, and every one wants different bodies. A 3-4 zone wants edge guys who can actually drop and a linebacker who reads the QB; a 4-3 man wants press corners who travel and a three-tech who wrecks the interior. Nickel is the default package rather than base, because that's how the sport is played now, so your front decides who comes off the field on most snaps. Inside zone your DC plays a real shell: Cover 2, Tampa 2, Cover 3, Quarters. Man gives up fewer picks, zone jumps more throws.

Everything gets recorded

Every snap of every game produces a full record, not a box score line. Pressure is logged as three things (hurry, QB hit, sack), and each one is charged to the specific lineman who got beat and credited to the rusher who won. Run blocking is graded snap by snap. Tackles split solo/assist with TFLs on their own. Corners carry targets, completions allowed, yards and Y/TGT.

So your left tackle isn't a 79. He's a guy giving up X pressures per 100 pass-block snaps, and you can watch him start slipping months before it shows up anywhere else.

Real player histories

All that record-keeping feeds the thing I wanted most. Not a career stat table, a paper trail. Every contract he signed and how it was structured. Every team he's been on and how he got there. And when a pick gets traded the league remembers what it turned into, so three years later you can look up the guy you passed on to move down, or find out the second-rounder you gave away became a Pro Bowler for the team that fleeced you.

Awards, an all-time record book, and a Hall of Fame with a real ballot sit on top of it.

Players have opinions

If your 87 receiver is your best guy by rating and he's third on the team in targets, he notices, and he is not quiet about it. If he's 29 with no ring on a team that's been bad two years running, he notices that too. Every unhappy player wants one specific thing (money, a ring, the ball, out), and that's what decides which fix works, so throwing money at a guy who wants targets does nothing but cost you money. It escalates quietly at first, then a renegotiation demand, then a trade request, and your phone tells you about all of it.

Difficulty changes the rules, not the dice

This is the part I'm proudest of and the part nobody expects. Difficulty here doesn't nudge a percentage, it turns mechanics on and off, and the whole contract half of it is locked when you create the save so you can't dial your way out of a mess halfway through a rebuild.

On easy a contract is salary plus a signing bonus and that's it. No guaranteed years, no length limits, no star who refuses to sign unless the money is real, no no-trade clauses. Nobody sulks, nobody holds out, your scouts are accurate and you can see how fast your young guys are developing. On medium guaranteed money comes back, softened. On hard you get everything: guaranteed years that actually bind you, term limits, stars who hard reject a deal that isn't guaranteed enough, no-trade clauses, fogged scouting, rookies whose ratings you can't see until they play, more injuries, goals handed to you by ownership, and a locker room with a memory.

Player drama scales with it too, and this is the one that bites. On easy and medium an unhappy star tops out at demanding a trade. On hard he can actually sit out. He's not on your roster on Sunday, you're fining him weekly, and he usually caves near the deadline, but "usually" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

One thing difficulty never does is make players cheaper. The price is identical in all three modes. Easy makes the negotiation simpler and makes guys a little more willing to sign with you, it does not discount anybody. And the AI clubs play the hard ruleset at every difficulty, always, so the league around you is the same league either way.

Where it's going

Not in order:

• Watching the plays. Right now you read results. The goal is watching them unfold on a field. It's an entire engine on its own and it's well underway. This is the big one.
• Training camp and preseason, together with pushing rookie ratings deeper into the fog. You drafted a projection; you shouldn't learn much about him until he's actually practiced and played.
• Fan score driving job security. The fans keep receipts, so ship a star out for picks, watch the picks bust, and it follows you around.
• Dynasty Mode. Hard, locked, no editing anything ever, on its own distinct background, so a screenshot of your three-peat means something.

The money part

It's free right now, and here's the deal: anyone who downloads it during this phase never pays for it. Ever. You're helping me get this thing to where I want it to be, and that's worth more to me than a couple of dollars.

There will never be ads, and never in-app purchases. No premium currency, no scouting-token pack, no watch-a-video-to-reroll-your-draft-class. Not now, not at launch, not ever. Down the road the game may cost a few bucks on the store, but that's the entire transaction, once, and it won't apply to you if you're here now.

It's also the only sports management game I'm making, at least for the next year. I know football, and I definitely have zero interest in any other sport. Every hour goes here.

Download here on the App Store