They're not paying attention. None of the players have stretches in the upper chest area like they should, though it is common to a vast number of player body types across all positions (and they were doing it in Madden 09 and 10):
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...postcount=1143
Peyton Manning is still not wearing his towel in the middle like he has since, what, 1994 while at Tennessee perhaps?
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...postcount=1144
I'd love to hear their technical excuse for that.
This just looks like Madden 15. I see no difference. And it's not that Madden 15 looked bad, but the daytime lighting completely sucked (it looked flat and washed out), the colors were all off and dull on every setting of the game, and it looks like they've done zero to fix that based on the Gronkowski pic.
Plus, the texture levels just don't look high enough. But when you make a design choice like having 40,000 polygonal fans with decent detail and 3D grass that's always on, you're going to choke some resources. Why they abandoned their much smarter and more practical approach to those things from last gen is beyond me.
Oh, and about that other stuff you mentioned, I wouldn't hold my breath. I'd expect the game to play pretty much the same, as what you're asking for would be a huge leap that would be totally uncharacteristic of this development.