I know it's not a full year that the game gets worked on, because it's finalized a month before release, then the month after you are still doing stuff post-launch with the game. Plus this is probably a popular time for most of the dev team to go on vacation.
The players models were completely different this year, so you have to re-do models and every jerseys and accessory
NCAA has some added stuff. I remember reading about Corso and crew being at EA to do it
Madden is guilty on this. No reason not to have the save highlight feature
People are just expecting to much out of a sports games on next gen. You can only do so much more then you could on last gen. It's games like BIOSHOCK, which is on it's way to being the best reviewed game of all time that shows off the next gen power.