I get what you're saying and agree. We talked about this last year; expectations of (most) EA Sports games tends to be on the really lax side. Look at what NBA2k7 is shaping up to be, yet there's been near zilch from the Live team - and not one peep from Live fans asking for more info. It takes a lot of ballz to set your product out in the open, and that it can stand up to such scrutiny is a huge credit to what they're doing. And that game comes out months after Madden & NCAA does - we still have yet to get one decent video of direct feed gameplay from either game. "wait until July" is what people are saying. People are having to hold their breath just hoping the game is decent - there are no lofty comparisons to real life play.
I seriously doubt VC will ever get the credit they truly deserve for what they did in less than one year with NFL2K5 (or year and a half if you throw in 2K4), and all that was included with it. Madden was slow to adopt head tracking (NCAA had it a couple years before it did I think), and still hasn't added gang tackling, OL double team blocking (just better player interaction overall), online leagues, halftime shows... When you think about those things, grass seems a little inconsequential. All except maybe online leagues are features we should be expecting to be in the game, not crossing our fingers and hoping they decide to add it at some point. So I understand why people might criticize EA even when they do something decent. As people will forever dog VC for any perceived bug in a game, it should be expected EA's reputation for it's lackadasial approach should be something they have to live with