The game "likes" default settings. There are very few areas in which you can stray without some clear negative effects on animation fidelity and the "little stats" that tell a big story about how the game is rendering. And even in those areas, you don't have much wiggle room.
The short of it is that I get the best results from this game w/ default speed threshold and injury, all default sliders, 60/80 auto subs, and 2-3 minor penalty slider adjustments.
I've tried all kinds of hot rodded versions of subs, sliders, and penalties, and the game just only tolerates so much of that.
This is one area where finding out how the devs play helps me. If they build this thing for default and play default, they tune to default and are best able to know what the consequences of a given design decision do...on default. So that's where I'm settling in.
I don't love that 7 minutes is their setting, as that perhaps explains why the game seems to want to deliver two NFL games' worth of big plays in any single, regular game in Madden. If you only can afford to play 7 minute quarters (and I get why with jobs, families, etc.), you're going to want to see the whole shebang in there in terms of yards, points, big plays, etc.
One question I'd have regarding the difference between 7 minutes and my setting of 15 is: is the game scaled to give the 7 minute crowd all the splash plays and yardage they want to feel like they're having fun, AND to give the 15 minute guys an appropriate number of points, yards, and big plays?
It very well may be and I would have no idea. If so, great. If not, this would be an area where we could ask that some attention be paid, rather than ride the developers for playing the game differently than many of us do.