I'd like some elaboration on this too. For the longest time I've been hoping a developer would chime in and break down the way linebackers are programmed to function, because I was told last year before next gen's release that the defenses had gap assignments on every run play. Now me being me, I foolishly assumed that meant every defender had a responsibility (based on coverage) the way they do in real life, but looking back there was no elaboration whatsoever and as you noted, didn't seem to really apply to second and third level defenders.
In fact, last year, the linebacker play in some ways was even worse on certain runs such as power-o's and stretches. It used to be that the linebackers, while never attacking their gaps, would at least attempt to leverage the runs. On power-o's, the outside linebacker would move to the C gap, and MLB would follow to play over the top, and it actually worked to a degree because the run blocking logic was on par with the defensive logic. Last year on that same play, the Outside backer would stand there in his B gap a beat longer and wouldn't react to get outside until it was too late making it waaayyyy too easy for runs to bounce outside and with the improved run blocking logic, defenders didn't stand a chance when you played base stuff. I hated the things I had to do last year to contain simple off tackle plays.
Here is what it looked like a few years ago. Shouts out to WFColonel. I stumbled on this vid many moons ago and it helped me mimic a few real world things in the game controlling my inside linebackers.
As you see, both of these plays were successfully defensed because the run blocking logic.
This is what it looked like on Madden 25 (PS4/All-Pro difficulty out of a Cover 3). This is 8 men in the box now. No way this run should be able to bounce to the outside that easily, and you shouldn't have to do anything fancy like slanting your line or run committing, this kind of run should be shut down with just a basic run fit. But because the defensive logic didn't keep pace with the offensive improvements, this type of unbalanced result is what you get, the safety and the outside linebacker just standing there waiting to be blocked. I cannot tell you how let down I was when I first saw this. All of the talk about player sense, calculations per second were nowhere to be found.