You are correct Mac, an 8pt lead wouldn't be much against Mad in the 4th. If you look at the rules again, you'll see that we allow one free 4th down play per game that is outside of the rules. Instances like what you're talking about are exactly why we have that rule. So in your example, you would still be able to go for it on 4th if you want to try to run clock. As per the rule tho, you have to let Mad know that you're going for it first.
We thought about the warnings and it just doesn't sit right with us, that someone could potentially lose a game or feel disrespected and the offending party only got a warning over and over. Now for some minor offenses and mistakes, Mad may be inclined to give a warning, but for egregious offenses and errors, we feel that some kind of penalty is necessary. Nice suggestions on the chat btw. I don't think we discussed that. Most likely those would be warnings tho.
This is a touchy subject because everyone hates disconnects, especially when they're winning. Most of the time, people can work out how they want to replay the game, but for those few instances when both parties can't come to an agreement, we need something in place to settle the dispute. I've heard from a few users that don't agree with playing back to a score and that's cool, but we can't just hand out wins to people. You asked what if there are injuries in the playback? There is no scenario where there would be absolutely no injuries. If you play the cpu, there could be injuries. If you sim the win, there could be injuries. There is no pretty way to replay a disconnected game. No matter how you replay it, stats will be different and injuries could happen. We can't control those. We can control the score tho so playing back to a certain score seem like the only fair way to do it. If you have some other suggestions on how to handle disconnects, we'd love to hear them. Basically, It's up to you and your opponent to work it out. If you can't, we'll have something in place to reference to settle the dispute.