CapForge: Football GM

The cap is the actual opponent. Cut a guy and what you still owe him follows you, though only what's genuinely left, since the seasons he played absorbed the money you already paid. You can guarantee money, restructure a deal, tag somebody, hand out a no-trade clause, and every one of those is still there in year three when the plan has changed and you'd rather it wasn't.

The rest of the league won't help you fix it. Rival GMs price the contract instead of the rating, so an overpaid star is as much of a liability to them as he is to you, and a deal that doesn't fit under their cap doesn't happen. They'll tell you no, and they'll be right to.

The year runs in a fixed order. Re-signings, cuts, the franchise tag, then free agency in three waves with a sealed-bid auction at the end, so you find out how the first wave shook out while you're already standing in the second. Then the draft, the season, the playoffs, the awards and the retirements, and you roll it over with last year's bill still on your books.

The draft class runs 480 deep and seven rounds take only 224, so most of a class walks into free agency instead of onto a roster. Mock boards land in your inbox through the season. Your guy's in there somewhere.

This rewards caring about the small stuff. 78 stats are tracked for every player across 15 positions, and that includes the ones nobody puts on a highlight reel: pressures charged to the lineman who actually got beaten, snap by snap run blocking, targets and yards allowed on the corner covering them.

Your left tackle isn't a 79. He's a guy giving up pressure at a rate you can watch get worse months before anything else notices. And when a number moves, an in-app guide of 49 topics tells you why instead of leaving you to guess.

Difficulty changes the rules rather than nudging the odds. On Easy the guarantees aren't up for negotiation at all. And when a star outplays the deal you gave him he notices, and on Easy and Medium he'll ask out, and on Hard he'll actually sit.

Your opponents pile up. Every meeting between two clubs is remembered, and a series that stays close and stays mean gets named for it, working up through history and rivalry to bad blood. You get the write-up before kickoff and your record against all 31 of them.

Coaches have a market of their own. Coordinators and scouts hit free agency, you can promote one of yours into the head chair, or pay a premium to poach somebody else's. Loyalty buys a discount, so does a contender's job, and the offer screen tells you which.

You don't have to keep the names, either. Rename the clubs, cities, stadiums and conferences, and set all three of a club's colors.

It's still being built, in the open. Updates land most weeks, and one of them is titled Fixes from your reports, because that's where it came from. Report something broken and there's a real chance you end up playing the fix.

Free, and it stays free. No microtransactions, no in-app purchases, no ads, no energy timers, no premium currency, no paid boosts. Ever.

Fully offline. No account, no server. It runs on your phone.

Players are fictional and randomly generated. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any league, club, or organization; third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.