With just over two weeks until the July 19 release date for EA Sports College Football 25, we continue to get more and more information about the return of the college football video game franchise. We got an early look at the game back in May, with a chance to play the game for a few hours and hear a lot about Dynasty mode, Road to Glory, and more, we didn’t get an actual opportunity to see the full mechanics of things outside of gameplay.
On Tuesday, a new deep dive into Dynasty mode got released, and we got a ton of information about how recruiting and the transfer portal will work, as well as the coaching carousel. Here, we’ll dive into everything about how the carousel works, hiring and firing coaches, how coaching archetypes work, and how it all impacts your program.
Coaching Archetypes
After deciding whether to be a head coach, offensive coordinator, or defensive coordinator to start your career, you can choose which of the three base coaching types you will be: Recruiter (self-explanatory), Motivator (player development and program culture), or Tactician (X’s and O’s). Within each type you can pick a path to either become hyper specialized (i.e., Elite Recruiter) or more balanced (i.e., Talent Developer, who blends Recruiter and Motivator) as a coach. There is no one right path, and the idea was to create pros and cons for each. Getting hyper-specialized will give you bigger boosts in that area, so if you want to run a Mario Cristobal Simulator and become the best recruiter, you’ll dominate the recruiting trail but you’ll lag behind in the world of scheme and talent development. However, you can’t be great at everything in the game, so trying to be balanced comes with its own negatives, as you’ll struggle to do any one thing at an elite level.
The ultimate goal is to become an “elite archetype” of Program Builder or CEO, and you can do that by taking any of the pathways. All told, there are 11 archetypes, from specialization to blends of talents, with each having unique areas of expertise and perks, from in-game boosts to recruiting boosts to better player development. They all form what EA calls a “rock, paper, scissors relationship” to ensure there isn’t one dominant archetype.
You can upgrade your archetype by earning coaching points, which come from achieving different goals in the various areas. The example they provide is to become an Elite Recruiter you have to spend 50 Coach Points in the Recruiter archetype and also sign two top-5 recruiting classes. You can view your progress on the Coach Abilities screen in the Dynasty Hub, seeing what archetypes are available, requirements to unlock them, perks they provide, and your progression in each.
Coordinators and head coaches have the same archetypes and skill trees, which is important to consider when building your staff. Coordinator and head coach skills stack, which means if you are a recruiter and hire other recruiters, you’ll get bigger boosts. However, you also can look to balance your staff by filling in your personal weaknesses by hiring coordinators with strengths in those areas. Again, that creates more balance but limits how significant the boosts you can get in each area will be.
Coaching Contracts
Each contract will come with a set number of years and performance expectations. The four contract expectations are Number of Wins, Win a Conference Championship, Make the Playoff, and Win a National Championship. The expectations are determined by the school’s Team Prestige rating at the time of signing the deal. Your job security will fluctuate based on how you are doing in relation to those goals and the further you get from them, the closer you are to going on the hot seat — and potentially getting fired. You can get fired in the game (unless you turn that off in settings), and your job security is tied to your success on the field. Winning a big game or beating a rival will boost your job security, while a bad loss to an FCS team will drop it considerably.
Once your contract runs up, your school will determine whether to extend you or not based on your performance in meeting those expectations. Extension offers are automatically signed to avoid any accidental skipping through that stage and losing a job you were already in, but an extension doesn’t preclude you from entering the Coaching Carousel and taking a new job.
Coaching Carousel
One thing fans really wanted was an expanded Coaching Carousel, and it certainly appears we are getting it this year. The carousel is now a five-week process that will start on Conference Championship week, as all coaching contracts will be processed and schools determine whether they are going to fire, extend, or let contracts expire. You’ll be able to fire coordinators as the head coach during this week, but you also might get a coordinator poached away during the carousel, requiring you to scramble during the carousel process to land some new assistants. Offers aren’t guaranteed to be accepted, and if you fail to hire a coordinator by the end of the carousel process, you’ll be given one based on the caliber of your program.
The first week of bowl season will bring the first round of job offers on the carousel. This year, the goal was to make the carousel more dynamic and more chaotic. Teams will try poaching coaches in established jobs, which means you might get an offer, but you’ll also need to pay attention to who is being offered jobs by other teams (which you can see in the Carousel page) to determine whether you sign with a school or hold out for a better job to hopefully open. You can see the top candidates for each open job in the All Openings filter on the carousel page, and you can game out what jobs might come open based on who they’re going after. For example, if you see Texas is interested in Tennessee’s head coach, you might turn down another offer to see if the Vols job opens. However, if you wait too long or guess wrong on who may take another job, the top jobs may all be gone and you’ll be left to take a lower level job.
Each school will pick their candidates on five criteria that meet their school “persona.” One is your Coaching Level, which takes into account your abilities, as schools will be looking for the best coach they can get. The second is Scheme, as some schools prefer a certain offense or defense (i.e., service academies want to run the option). The third is Archetype, as some schools will want a Recruiter but others will prefer a Tactician — and elite schools will be hunting for CEO/Program Builders. The fourth is Pipeline, as each coach has a primary recruiting pipeline where they have deep ties, and schools will look to hire coaches who have pipelines that overlap with the school’s pipeline. The final one is Coach Prestige, which matches your prestige grade with the team’s prestige grade, as a big school won’t be hiring a C level coach. Those five criteria will combine to create a “school fit” grade and that will determine who each school targets.