KillRoy, your post made me think about a couple things.
First of all, back in its "heyday" Madden was basically a fun arcade football game. When 2K sports hit the scene they managed to create a game that was a more accurate simulation while also amazingly being more fun to play. EA saw the writing on the wall and began the slow and painful process of trying to transform Madden into more of a sim, but their engine wasn't built for that which is why the game was a mess for so many years. They were trying to respond to market demand/competition, but were using the wrong engine to do so (this is also why they ultimately went for the option of the exclusive NFL license...they were getting their behinds kicked and knew they had no chance of competing without taking a year off to re-design the engine from the ground up).
Madden was gradually transformed into a hybrid sim/arcade game, that didn't do either very well. Madden 10 is the first version in several years which finally seems to be getting more things right than it gets wrong, and is finally fun to play again. However, what we have here is still FAR, FAR from a true sim.
With that in mind, your complaints are kinda off base...no offense.
1) In terms of a "sim", Madden 10's flat passes are broken. The flat passes are nearly unstoppable, even after the patch. I'm not sure why you are complaining about this since if what you want is the ability to pass into the flats at will, this game supplies that aplenty. It's actually pretty ridiculous how arcadish this feels.
2) In REAL NFL football, sweeps & tosses almost never work because unlike college football, linebackers are much too fast sideline to sideline. Even superhuman speedsters at RB have difficulty turning the corner on sweeps in the real NFL on a consistent basis. If this was not the case you'd see backs like Reggie Bush dominating the league. The reason he's not an every down back even though he has other-worldly speed is because sweeps just don't work all that well in the NFL due to the speed of NFL defenders. So, in terms of sweeps this is one aspect of Madden 10 that is somewhat realistic. Tosses, on the other hand, are totally unrealistic in Madden 10 as they work far more often than not...almost to the point of absurdity.
3) I'm able to avoid the rush fairly consistently in Madden 10 with most mobile QBs. This is actually one of the things the game does well IMHO. When you step up into the pocket, most of the time it feels fairly realistic. There are times when you can "lead" a defender into a blocker by juking back and forth, and that feels a little cheesy. But, all in all, "pocket time" is done pretty well. It is fun to play and most of the time you have between 3-7 seconds to throw the ball, which is fairly realistic (real NFL QBs have to consistently get rid of the ball in 3-4 seconds to be successful).
"Sliding" players...especially QBs...in a modern football game is simply a horrible, horrible idea. Going backwards to superhuman QBs who can "slide" and avoid the pass rush for 10 or 15 seconds so they can throw 50 yard bombs every other play is not a recipe for a good football SIM.
A modern football game needs to provide elements of realism while still being fun to play. Madden 10 does the "fun to play" part pretty well. But it is still not a very good sim. If you want to play purely arcade football, then stick to the old versions. That's what they are made for. You can play Tecmo Bowl if thats what you want.
As for me and what I think most gamer/football fans want out of a modern football sim...no thanks.
About the only statement you made that I would agree with is that Madden would benefit from a new engine built from the ground up. However, we don't need a game that mimics the old arcade versions of Madden. We need a game that is a better sim which is still fun to play and has arcade elements, depending on slider usage. As it stands right now, Madden 10 is a sim/arcade hybrid but the sim portion is totally broken and the slider system/stats of the players are mostly window dressing that make virtually no difference to the outcome of the games.