There's a lot of things in Madden that's not realistic, though.
So if cheese = unrealistic, then does that make Madden a cheese game?
I'm not defending cheese - but I can see lots of things a real NFL player wouldn't do that happens in Madden that have nothing to do with whether or not a player is "Sim" or not but the way the game operates as it is.
Also, people talk about what they see on Sundays - well Jax went for it on 4th down in their own territory, a move considered "cheese" because "it doesn't happen" but it just did.
Throwing the backs is (or at least used to be) considered cheese - but happens frequently in real life. Heck, Ray Rice leads HB in pass receptions - Bryan Westbrook and Marshall Faulk (going back some years) were big in the pass game, but that's cheese in the Madden world?
It's interesting where the line gets drawn and how it's "okay" to cut off things that DO happen on Sundays as still being cheese.
Do QBs sprint for the sideline at the snap? No. Does Madden have a realistic number of bootlegs? Imo, no. But it's okay to run bootlegs out of just a few predictable plays (as in, oh they bootlegged so they are running 1 of 3 plays in their playbook) - but not okay to be creative and improvise, even though players do that all the time on Sunday when they need to make a play?