It seems like the actual game isn't that bad. It's just the numbers are totally screwed up, if that distinction makes sense. EA created an engine that could do a reasonable job of replicating football. They just need to patch a few coefficients and that would do the same job as these global AGI edits.
This story gets really bizarre when you remember that tuner sets became a "feature" this year for this exact fricking reason. All these issues we moan about in thread after thread - finesses vs. power moves, turning on a dime, ball trajectory, jumping, psychic DBs - are all math issues that could be fixed (debatable in some cases, but please God, no TNT telling me ball trajectory is awesome) without a full patch.