ESPN NFL 2K5

The game features a franchise mode with a SportsCenter feature hosted by Chris Berman. He outlines the games of the current week with his co-host Trey Wingo who talks about the latest injuries and free agent deals and trades during the season. Mel Kiper Jr. hosts the draft portion of the segment, while Suzy Kolber reports from the sidelines.

There is also weekly preparation for the coming week, which allows the player to make decisions on training and preparation. The player can also create their own team, deciding the team logos (over 10 are available), team name, the team's city, the team's stadium look and build, jerseys and how good the team is. It also has a feature called first-person football, which gives the player the experience on the field looking from the eyes of the players. There is also the traditional create-a-player mode.

Upon release, ESPN NFL 2K5 received "universal acclaim" on both platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. 5 out of 10 and summarized his positive review by calling it "the best football title there is and the only one that's a must have", a quote which was paraphrased on the front cover of the game's keep case. Andrew Reiner echoed this sentiment in the review's "Second Opinion" section, calling ESPN NFL 2K5 "the greatest football game to date." 4 out of 10 respectively, and each version was awarded the publication's "Editor's Choice".

Carle praised the game's various features, particularly the VIP system, which he called, "Probably the coolest innovation ESPN NFL 2K5 has to offer." Bro Buzz of GamePro gave the game a perfect 5 out of 5, praising the incorporation of ESPN broadcast styles within the game and noting that "the tight controls do a great job of commanding a slick array of player moves and on-the-fly scheme adjustments."

In retrospective analyses, ESPN NFL 2K5 has continued to receive favorable comparisons to the Madden NFL series and is noted for its depth that has yet to be matched in subsequent years. In 2014, Owen S. Good of Polygon wrote that NFL 2K5 was "sports video gaming's King Arthur, eternally populist, noble and heroic, champion of an age long ago enough to make its triumphs soar and its shortcomings recede to nothingness." Good went on to state that EA's Madden developers "for 10 years have been haunted by NFL 2K5 — in forums, in comments, in social media — that nothing they do could be as good as something that by now really isn't a video game, but a mythological ideal that grows more romantic with every year".

A 2016 Game Informer retrospective by Matthew Kato praised the variety of features in the game, which was noted as "a far cry from the stark decline that followed in EA's NFL titles." Kato concluded by stating, "The title is more than just a novelty or a case of its reputation exceeding its value, a rare feat for the genre in my eyes." The game has very often been considered by critics to be one of the greatest video games ever made.