Ian's the one that said if they used it, you'd have to give up things like fighting for extra yardage and such (something they didn't really have all that much in the game at the time). That statement was bogus though, as you can code custom actions for any interaction. So they could have triggered a 'grab' animation, or a 'hang on' animation and the effects of it would have overridden the natural collision that would have occurred. There's zero reason it couldn't have been used. Madden would have been on far more solid ground moving forward had they chosen to use it.
Next thing for M12 that needs to be addressed is tackling in general. The types of tackles, at least a two or three impact tackle so we see momentum in play at all times. I would have preferred that over the ProTak impl they did in M10.