Strategize

Build your roster, adjust salary caps, draft contracts, customize your playbook, review player skills!

Trade

Establish your team culture, scout the right players, upgrade, sign, cut, draft, and trade!

Progress

Simulate games against rival teams to grow over time! Progress and regress each year depending on your team's unique situation.

Win

Win the PFL Championship and become a football dynasty!

About Progression Football

Progression Football is an American football simulation game based on the NFL.

The Game

Users can create or join a league, and then optionally manage one of the teams in the league. As a manager, users control roster management, depth charts, player contracts, rookie scouting, rookie drafting, and team strategy. Teams that are not managed by a user will be managed by the CPU.

Wherever possible, CPU teams will obey the rules that would be applied to human players. For example, if a CPU team has rookie scouting level 0, they will probably have a poor draft. This overall concept was a major inspiration for creating Progression Football, as other football simulation games resorted to the CPU cheating to keep up with human players.

The goal of each coach is to successfully perform the roles of General Manager and Head Coach over multiple seasons to build a football team into a legendary franchise!

Get Started!

Highlights

  • Server-side, single-or-multiplayer, online web-based football management game
  • Custom game simulation engine
  • Realistic rosters
  • Roster management (Sign, Cut, Draft, Trade, Depth Chart)
  • Trade Block with AI only offering trades that benefit both teams - AI trade with each other as well
  • New probability-based progression system based on the situation of each player
  • Unique player attributes
  • New Consistency mechanic for each player
  • New Culture mechanic for all players and teams
  • Historical stat tracking (per player and team)
  • Customizable upgrades for teams (Scouting, Development, and Coach Boosts)

Features

Progression Football is jam-packed with features to enhace the in-game experience. Dive deep into roster managment, team building, collections, and more!

Free to Play

Progression Football is free to play. Not pay to win. Everyone is on an equal playing field.

Unique & Realistic Game Simulation

Realistic AI game simulation adapts to boosts, upgrades, player, and coach features to progress across seasons.

Play with Friends

Unlimited multi-player options with up to 32 players per league! Server-side simulation engine to progress and save changes over time.

Earn Trophies & Achievements

You can earn trophies by accomplishing objectives such as winning championships, building your team, collecting cards, or completing certain tasks. Collect rare trophies, display your achievements, and outshine the competition.

Play Your Way

Play in a competitive or non-competitive league. In non-competitive leages, you can change anything you want without limits. Competitive leagues follow real-world logic.

Choose Your Upgrades

Earn team points and upgrade your team, coach, and players. Build scouting skills, coach boosts, player attributes, and more!

Get Started

Register for free to create your first leage and manage your team! Build your roster and simulate multiple seasons to win the PFL Championship and build your team into a legendary football dynasty!

In-Game Screenshots

Check out some screenshots from Progression Football!

Team Listing

Players

Evaluate Platers & Upgrade Coaches

Depth Chart

Passing Stats

Player History

Storylines

League Standings

Free Agent Bidding

Sign Players

Achievements

Limited Edition Cards

Collect Cards

View Team Roster

Display Your Cards

Team Upgrades

Playoff Bracket

GM Messages

Storylines

Make Trades

Developer

Jeff Mueller

Developer

Progression Football is designed and developed by Jeff Mueller. Jeff is an IT systems engineer and a lifelong football fan. He created Progression Football to fill a gap in football simulation games and he is continuously updating and improving the game. If you enjoy this free game, please consider Donating via PayPal, or buying some cool stuff at the Store to help pay for server hosting costs necessary to keep the game running!


Frequently Asked Questions

  • How are games played?

    All games are simulated with no direct user interaction using PFL's custom simulation engine. The engine was created from scratch and uses weighted random probabilities to simulate outcomes, based on NFL game statistics for realism. Every play's outcome is determined by the individual players on the field, their ratings, and each team's gameplan.

  • Each player has a rating called OVR, which stands for "overall" rating. A higher value means the player has more skill and ability on the football field. They also have a rating called "CON" for "consistency", which is a negative value. For each game, each player will have an "effective OVR" rating that falls somewhere in the range between the player's OVR and the difference after applying the CON. The simulation engine uses this value during its calculations to determine each play's outcome. Things like Team Culture, Player Attributes, Draft Boosts, and Coach Boosts also impact a player's OVR.

  • Players will automatically progress or regress during the offseason. There are many factors that contribute to a player's progression/regression chances, but the most relevant factor is the player's age. The PC (progression chance) rating represents a player's chance to progress. Managers can increase PC for players on their roster by using Team Points throughout the season to increase the chances for the players at a certain position to progress in the offseason.

    Players earn points after playing in games, based on the DEV rating as well. Players will automatically upgrade their consistency when they earn enough points to do so. This mechanic is to represent players becoming more consistent due to game experience, but not allow them to become superstars simply by having them play more often.

    All players' DEV values reset to 1.0 after each season.

  • Each team earns 1000 points after each week. The coach of each team can choose to spend Team Points to upgrade Development for all players on the team, increase the team's Rookie Scouting level, or purchase an OVR Coach Boost for a certain position. Progression Cap limits how much players on your team can progress this offseason. Scouting upgrade costs increase as the season progresses. Scouting and Progression Cap values reset to 1.0 after each season, but Coach Boosts are permanent.

  • The upcoming rookie draft class is created at the beginning of each season. Each undrafted rookie's OVR rating is hidden, and is instead represented by a range of possible values. Rookies will continue to have their OVR hidden (represented by a random value from the team's scouting window) until that player plays in 3 games.

    Throughout the season, teams may choose to spend their points on Scouting. Increased rookie scouting ability will increase the accuracy of undrafted rookies' possible OVR rating range. The possible rookie scouting levels for a team can be anywhere from 0 to 7. At rookie scouting level 0, teams will have a difficult time determining which upcoming rookies will have high OVR ratings. At rookie scouting level 7, the range of OVR ratings is small, and that team will have a better chance to identify rookie talent. Visibility to other player abilities are unlocked as Scouting level increases.

  • The offseason consists of the following events: Retired Players, Re-Sign Players, Free Agent Bidding, and the Draft. Then, a new season schedule is created, and all teams' Scouting and Progression Cap values are reset to 0.

  • Each team has a contract limit (by default, $240M). Each player has a contract value which is calculated based on position and OVR. The sum of all player contracts on a team must be less than the contract limit. During the offseason, each contract will expire unless re-signed by the coach. If a player's contract expires, they will be Cut, and that player will become a Free Agent. Players can be re-signed to contracts of multiple years. This will incur a smaller salary. However, cutting or trading a player before their contract is expired will result in Cap Penalties (25% of the player's promised salary for each of the years in his contract).

    Drafted players will demand a salary value equal to the OVR they were scouted at. This is to encourage managers to spend points on Scouting, otherwise their rookies will demand a high salary!

    Players who have won a championship or earned a Yearly Award will demand a 20% higher salary.

  • Each season's schedule is pseudo-randomly generated based on NFL Schedule creation rules.

    Injuries, fumbles, kickoffs, and custom team logos are also factored into the simulations!

  • You can join our Discord server or email the developer at progressionfootballgame at gmail dot com!

  • Progression Football is created, updated, and paid for by one person. If you enjoy this free game, please consider Donating via PayPal, or buying some cool stuff at the Store to help pay for server hosting costs to keep the game running! To donate, please click the "Donate" button at the bottom of any page. Or, visit the Store for some cool PFL bonuses!