I think the even on NG the "75 rule" still applies when setting up All Madden sliders. Meaning, collectively each section of the Human sliders can not exceed 75. For instance your Human passing sliders equal up to 83. Your Human Pass defense sliders equal 100. This could be contributing to some people having an easy time with your sliders and getting funky results. Tweak these back down to equal 75 in the main menu, load them into CCM, play a few games and see what happens.
Like sooner1 said this game plays good on default All-Madden or All-Pro depending on what you're skill level and playstyle is IMO. I just get the feeling you guys are gonna get slider-itis and obsessively tweak to get perfect gameplay and perfect stats and you're gonna kill your fun for the game.
The excessive drops by the CPU i haven't seen. Can't think of what could be causing that.