In Madden, 2k, and probably most other sports games, awareness is used pretty much to balance out OVRs. Some people say it has no effect on gameplay, others say it does. In my experience though, a player with a low awareness but higher ratings everywhere else will perform just as well as a player with the same ratings but a high awareness. I think awareness is just used to balance out OVRs a bit. I may very well be wrong though.