I don't blame the NFL for wanting the exclusive deal and protecting their image. From a financial standpoint, the Madden franchise was the only one that was making any significant money using the NFL name anyway, so now the same is true, except that EA
pays the NFL extra money for the right to make that game.
But I think the
PR angle has as much to do with it as anything. The NFL got mad at ESPN for airing Playmakers, which was a show that didn't even feature the NFL, but depicted a pro league similar to the NFL with players doing coke during halftime and all kinds of other plot lines that made pro football look bad. If you have two or three NFL games trying to one-up each other, you'll invariably get something like Blitz: The League where you have guys purposefully trying to injure each other, and all kinds of things that could portray the league in a negative light.
The NFL is a business, it doesn't "owe" it to video gamers to provide as many NFL video game options as possible.