I think their should be more emphasis on the Coaches within the game. At the moment it seems that all people are interested in is who is the Head Coach and what playbook they run.

How can they be more relevant.

1. Each should be able to Scout players in both free agency, trades and draft classes. Rather than have a Universal system for Player Weightings each coach has their own unique weights for each position. This would allow you to get three opinions on a player as well as your own individual weights (or the default set).

A positional coach would give his view on players in his position eg Kickers, QB's, DL etc. An Offense Co-ordinator or Defense Co-ordinator would give views on either all Offense players or all defense players. Finally the Head Coach would have an opinion on every player in the game.

The better rated a Coach is, the more accurate he should be in his assessment and over a period of seasons you would grow to trust the opinions of the better coaches.

It's possible that at draft time they could recommend 3-5 players for the positions they have control over. Whether you choose to accept their views or go with your own would still be down to your own decision.

2. A coaches prefferred style should have an impact on a players happiness and progression. This would allow some players who bust at training camp to go elsewhere and thrive and vice versa - this would be impacted by volatility and each player would have a preferred coaching style as a hidden attribute, some where he would improve but more steadily, some with no real impact and some that would accentuate a bust.

Other teams could then look to gamble on said player who may settle elsewhere and blossom. A player with an obvious bad relationship with a positional coach/co-ordinator or Head Coach could show his dissatisfaction with his status eg Livid, Unhappy, Neutral, happy etc and his 'attitude' could have an impact on team morale.

Might be an idea to give a Coach some sort of 'Personality' eg Upbeat and positive (Pete Carroll) through to Dour and Meticulous (Bill Belichick) with a players volatility, intelligence and discipline all impacting the player/coach relationship.

3. Introduce 'weighted' training camps, where you may look to work specifically on an area for improvement eg pass accuracy but it may have a negative impact elsewhere eg arm strength.

Perhaps this could be an added extra for the Co-ordinators who could pick 2 or 3 areas for the whole Offense or Defense to work on eg Zone Coverage and Strip Ball. How effective it would be would be based on a Coaches rating in that specific area.

4. Have a wider variety in playbooks. A new coach age 30 for instance would start with 40 Offensive plays and 30 defensive plays and would pick up one to three play(s) from each co-ordinator and two to five plays (minimum. one offense/one defense) from his Head Coach each season.

This would allow a Coach to start his career with a basic philosophy but pick up plays from his mentors each year. As such his philosophy could change over time

5. The option to match or improve an offer from another team in 'Free Agency'

I would really like to have these options

For 3 I would go with a base increase/bust. Then calculated by vol, coach position stats, intelligence and discipline, and happiness you are given weighted stats to apply.

For a 100 vol player who boomed and is happy with the team you would have 100 points to apply. Normal would give 75% points, unhappy 50% and livid 25%.

Then calculating an average balance of 50% head coach and 25% coordinator and 25% position coach in each stat. A 100 for the average would provide a 1 for 1 point application while 75 would provide 1 for 2, 50 1 for 4, and 25 1 for 8, under 25 1 for 16, and 0(no coach) points can't be applied.

Points could be applied at any point during the season but at end of season spin the AI will apply points at cheapest value automatically (using before coach firing/retirement numbers).

This applies to busting players too so effectively a great coaching staff can negate a bust and possibly even turn it positive.

A 100 intelligence will give a bonus 25 points to apply regardless of vol and happiness. This will reduce by 1 to 75 intelligence. 50-74 will offer 0 points. Intelligence at 49 and 48 will be -1 point, 47 and 46 -2 points and so on with 0 intelligence equaling -25 points.

Discipline would work the same way but affecting your coach average. 100 discipline adding 25 points to the average after it's calculated so a 75 coach average would count as a 100. Similarly under 50 lowering the score. If it somehow becomes lower than 0 even though you have coaches it will count as under 25 not 0 no coaches.

Free agent players would be counted as happy with a 75 coach average in all relevant stats. AI points applied by what most increases overall. This may make a few of them viable over time.

Coaches can also use extra points to slow decline at 4 times the cost based on average of coaches overall making good players able to maintain speed for example.

Also coaches can use points equal to retirement probability to convince players to return.

That's how I would do it anyways.