I would suggest testing if there's any OP in the last few minutes of the game in the PRESEASON games. Put all your starters in on defense against the opponent's 2nd/3rd stringers - and therefore a worse QB, WR's and OLine than their starters - and play regular defense. My first game in M17 was a preseason game and
I posted my experience in the Impressions thread. It seemed to me like both me and my opponent's offense was OP in the final minutes of the game. Here's a snippet:
"I had a very fun preseason game through 3 and a half quarters playing as the Bills against the Colts on 15 minute quarters and default All Pro. It was a tight affair, we had a lead going into the final 6-7 minutes of the game and everything just went completely crazy. Colts cut into our lead and we were only up by 3 points when we were able to pin them down at their own 4 yard line. Since I didn't want overtime and I wanted to see how easy it was for the opponent being down in the 4th to score a TD,
I went into the depth chart and put all my defensive starters back in against their backups. What happened? Colts marched 96 yards in a couple of minutes with every play except one being for positive yards.
"We got the ball back and my 3rd string QB C.Jones lead the team down the field to score a TD with 36 seconds left on the clock (I didn't like how easy that was and Jones was way too accurate). Colts got the ball back and again they had no problem marching down the field with their backup QB (Tolzien) gaining 75 yards on 3 passes to score another TD with 14 seconds left."
Two drives from Tolzien against my starters and it was like there was nothing I could do to stop them. I tried dropping deep, I tried blitzing, I tried man-to-man, zone, you name it - it was like my players weren't even on the field.
Note: This was just ONE game so it's not at all a big sample size, but as previously stated, if you wanna test the whole OP theory, test in preseason with your starting defensemen against the opponents 2nd/3rd stringers.