XP just feels wrong to me in a football game. I shouldn't be able to upgrade a player's deep accuracy if I just dink/dunk'd across the field and never threw a deep ball. It makes no sense at all. Let the players naturally progress on their own and let how YOU(as a player/CPU plays) determine how players improve. More deep balls(and higher % completed then expected) means an increase of that deep accuracy. It's simple things like this that makes me sad that EA thinks of the arcade than the sim people.
As for CPU/CPU, if it isn't in the game, then I'm not even going to think about getting M25. M13 was really meh, and I picked up M12 for the fun that I had with it. I don't understand the thought of removing a game mechanic that people use decently enough. It just makes those people mad, and for the people who didn't use it, they won't notice.