Not sure what the game is, but I can tell you what it's not: Not the NFL, Not really free, and Not good.
The game sucks you in early, in that you find yourself (at least I did) walking over all of your opponents very easily during my formative stages, at one point, I won 20+ games in a row against the AI in the single player mode. So I was thinking to myself, "jeez, I'm pretty good at this...". However, after a couple of days, the game all of sudden turned murderously difficult, and I couldn't beat anybody. AI Teams were shredding my defenses, Every quarterback I faced, was completing 80%+ of their passes to various receivers earning a 130+ QB rating, and acting like they were punching their tickets to Canton. Never once during the last 5 days did I face an AI QB in at least 40+ games who had a "bad game". I know that the game is supposed to present a challenge, but let's try to make it real, right?
So you start out with a team that you can improve thru earned Coaching Points and Quick Cash. The Coaching Points allow you to basically train you players between games and give boosts to your players on called offensive plays (one player per play, although after trying it may times, I didn't see that much difference between doing this and not doing it...). Coaching Points are earned for numerous accomplishments on the field, beating teams, and winning Challenges offered. The Quick Cash aspect is used to purchase items, like Premium offensive plays and defensive formations (you start out getting free ones during the early stages of the game for every level you increase up to the mid 30's and then they apparently stop, only purchase is available after that....), and available new position players from the Pro Shop. Quick Cash on it's own thru play, is accumulated VERY slowly.
So here's the deal on the "FREE" online play aspect of the game. Oh yeah, it's technically "FREE" and does not cost you to join (and you must endure continuous streaming ads during game play) and play the games, but you're advised that if you really want to improve your team, you need to pay for a game "subscription" where you get an allotment of Coaching Point and Quick Cash monthly, or flat out just buy Quick Cash and Coaching points directly. You can do either via a Credit Card or Paypal. And so this is where I found this aspect to be basically unworkable. My team was improving up to a point, but when it started to get battered by every opponent imaginable, I thought, "well, I'm going to expend a little of bit of $'s and add some stud players to my roster/starting line up to really ramp up my team's rating versus other AI teams...". Well that was WRONG. You can buy a bunch of NFL name players that are in the Classic, Elite, or Legend categories, so I went for a bunch of famous legends, like Dan Fouts, Eric Dickerson, Charles Haley, Deacon Jones (among others), who's addition to my team did not require any training to improve, and who each had apparently fabulous game stats in terms of both offensive and defensive stats capabilities, to turn my team from average to one for the ages.
Well, silly me for trying to do that. Your team is given a numerical rating based on overall capability which does improve over the course of games played, and when selecting AI opponents to play, one sees those teams' numerical ratings, which can be close to, or higher than yours. Well, w/ me spending a wad of Paypal $'s, my team improved it's numerical rating significantly, but guess what??... After doing that, all of the AI opponents' team ratings magically increased by the same ratio as well, so when I played them after all of my invested improvements on my team, I was still getting shredded on a regular basis. What's up w/ that? Why spend the $'s when it really doesn't make any difference in the overall competition mode? This made me feel like a sucker for doing this. And, the game's minimal documentation certainly did not make this aspect clear. Also, when selecting a team to play their numerical rating shown isn't the one you get after the game begins. I had a team with a 234 numerical rating, and so I selected an AI opponent with a rating in the 160's from the list available, but after the game begins, I find that this team's rating is now "magically" 10-15 points higer than mine. That's not only ridiculous, that's flat-out AI cheating in my opinion....
Other negative things about the game:
- Offensive and Defensive Plays are arranged such that it makes it difficult to find the plays when you have many, with a (very short at times...) play clock ticking down.
- There's not a whole heckuva lot of strategy involved here. One just picks an offensive play or defensive formation, and puts into active status (hike the ball on offense) and hope it works against the opponent's selection. Obviously one doesn't want to run up the gut when it's 3rd and 17, but that's about it. One can flip-flop the arrangement of the formation depending on where the ball is placed on the hash marks, but nothing more. No way to scout your opponent, so if I'm running a halfback power off tackle against a defensive lineman, I have no way of knowing if this DT is a Hall of Fame stud or a Community College reject, in terms of ability. After play selection, some plays work really well, and then running it again under the same conditions, one gets stuffed. I guess that's the algorithm "reality factor" of the game.
- The game play does not appear to recognize injuries or fatigue, and one cannot make changes to the starting line-ups during the games. So why have a roster over and above the minimums needed for a starting line up (like 4 CB's for a dime package)? And why waste Coaching Points on a deep bench roster, as many of the players given to you to begin with have the same starting stats, and training them keeps these basically identical, and so they're not needed for substitution during the game?
- The box scores of all of the completed games always show a "Penalties" line, but after a 100+ games, not one penalty (like the usual: offsides, holding, pass interference, block in the back, unsporstmanlike conduct, etc.) ever showed up in the game algorithm, except for one: If I didn't get my play or formation set up in time versus the play clock, I was assessed Delay of Game penalty. That never happens, of course, to the AI teams.
- The graphics are not bad, but not that great. And during game play, player numbers are kind of weird, sometimes they show up and sometimes not, and always the player with the ball, after getting tackled, for some reason has number "00".
- The audio parser for game play announcers is very limited, and extremely repetitive, never using player names or numbers. It go so repetitive and eventually annoying that I turned the sound off.
- There is an online Game Manual apparently available, but some of the Chapters of it are still grayed out and cannot be accessed by clicking on them. There's a note that says that these are "In Progress" still, but for a game that came out 9 months ago, why take so long to provide the full and complete documentation?
All in all, this game appears to be an ambitious beginning of this online MMO version of the NFL, but it falls very short in way too many categories, and with so many limitations and lacking aspects, that sorry, this is just not even close. I just really regret that I spent some Paypal $'s during my time playing it, and no way now that I can recover or justify these funds lost, because, there's no worth at all with me continuing on this incomplete and ultimately boring offering, there are much better games out there.