Coach contracts are much simpler than player contracts. You can sign a coach during any stage that you can sign a player. You can sign an unemployed coach at any time; you can also promote one of your coaches at any time. Signing a coach will automatically fire your coach at that position. You cannot fire a coach without signing a coach to take his place. If you enter a game stage and you are missing coaches, the game will sign a coach for you.

During early free agency, you can hire a coach from another team as long as you are offering him a promotion (position coach to coordinator or head coach, or coordinator to head coach). Outside of early free agency, you cannot hire a coach from another team.

Your available cash flow for coaches is determined by your attendance the previous year. The range is not significant, so if you have a poor team you should still be able to make reasonable offers for coaches.

The Head Coach determines your available playbook. For each player, his coaching hierarchy above him determines how quickly his attributes improve. His position coach is weighed at about 20%, his coordinator is weighed at about 30%, and his head coach is weighed at about 50%.

I posted this is MF-3, but I guess I should have posted this here.

In MF-3, I've looked through the NFC East and all the AFC, and EVERY Head Coach's ratings have gone down, according to the Progress link on each. I could check the last 12, but 20 of 20 Head Coaches had negative progress, I think there may be a problem.

Is there something wrong in the game engine? I would think some would go up, some would go down, and most would hold their ratings.

I'll check into it, the age decline might be kicking in earlier than it should.

All of my coaches suffered a decline as well, some of my coaches suffered significant losses in there ability of 10 points or more.

Coaches decline with age? Their wisdom should grow and their abilities should increase over time, not decrease...at least till about age 65, then a slow steady decline getting rather sharp at age 70. Worth considering anyway...

Yeah, it's not supposed to kick in until they're in their 60's.