Defensive A.I. and Difficulty
Scenario: You're facing a Cover 2 - a common zone defense. You flood the left side of the field with two receivers, a back and a tight end. You see your TE about to be wide, wide open as he finds the soft spot of the zone, your quarterback fires a bullet right into his hands. In '05 one of two things will happen: He'll drop the ball or a defender (regardless of his "awareness" score and regardless of the A.I. slider setting) will cross the field in plenty of time to knock the ball down. Worst yet, that defender may not be alone. It's very common to see four to six people with plenty of time to smack the ball down (maybe Ronnie Lot has a big family). If you get lucky and the ball gets through all the defenders and you have good enough timing to manually catch the ball, it may help, but not often enough to make it ok.
If you crank up the difficulty, short passing is so migraine-inducing that attempting it becomes a complete waste of time - the above examples just get worse. If you crank it down, short passing is still difficult and long bombs threaten to become money plays. You still get four downs. Throw four bombs and you won't be disappointed, unless you wanted a game that played like football.
And on the other side of the ball: If my created school is going to get burned long by a horribly untalented passing team it should be because there's no one covering the receiver. It could be blown assignments, biting on a fake, take your pick. But if my dumb, slow DB's manage to get there - three of them! - when the ball does, it shouldn't avoid their hands like the magic loogie on Seinfeld. I called the right formation and they played it perfectly. How many times should a Navy QB and receiver hook up on a long bomb in perfect coverage before someone says, "that's ridiculous!?" The defensive backs didn't get outjumped, outrun or outsmarted over and over again. They got out-programmed, and that's unacceptable.
