Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions, Shannon Sharpe of the Denver Broncos, and Ricky Williams of the Miami Dolphins appear on the cover.

[1] By July 2006, the PlayStation 2 version of NFL Street had sold 950,000 copies and earned $37 million in the United States.

Next Generation ranked it as the 58th highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in that country.

[21][22][23] It received a runner-up position in GameSpot's 2004 "Best Alternative Sports Game" award category across all platforms, losing to Mario Power Tennis.

[25] Maxim gave the game all five stars and said the player can "dispense with kicking and doodle-heavy playbooks, and deploy between-the-leg laterals and double reverses, plus a mess of excellent unsportsmanlike, showboating taunts.

"[26] The Village Voice gave the Xbox version a score of nine out of ten and said, "In the surprisingly good single-player "NFL Challenge" mode, you earn points to build a franchise, choosing everything from the players' mutated genes (10 attributes, plus size) to their speed-enhancing sneakers.

However, once you've seen all the style moves it doesn't have the staying power of much deeper football games like EA's own Madden NFL 2004.

"[19] David Leonard of PopMatters critiqued the game's depiction of African-American men, comparing the "emphasis on savagery, violence and animalistic features" to those used in the controversial first-person shooter Ethnic Cleansing.