They keep on changing the story, lol. In the Game Informer preview, Ian said they got the Gameflow idea from a random developer who suggested it during one of their meetings. Initially, everyone thought it was a "stupid" idea and laughed at him. But after examining the idea more, they had a magical change of heart and decided to make it the main feature of this year. So the idea went from "laughibly stupid" to "brilliant" in a span of days.
It's a hilarious reason, which I'm guessing why they're switching their story to the more romantic "We asked Madden to help us" version.