Well Madden did exist without XP progression for majority of it's life span. Even when Pokemon was huge in the 90's and heavily relied upon XP, EA never implemented it. Yet years later they implement it, when it doesn't even work for a football game. XP doesn't work in sports games, yes RPG games but Madden is not a RPG game, it's a sports game that for some reason has a RPG feature in it.
Plus we did have potential before they did like they always do, remove it instead of improving upon it. So I imagine folks who don't like XP will soon be happy once EA comes up with another progression system to replace it.