We saw this issue in the QB scramble thread. You offered three strategies that help stop scrambling QBs. Strategies carry with them risk/reward. They may leave leave other areas open and allow other plays to work much better. But this is how competitions works.
What was the solution by the sim guys in the thread? Go into attributes and change the scrambling QB into a player that won't scramble so much. It's what I';ve called paint-by-numbers boring. There is no learning, no improving skills. They just dial in the results they want and make them happen. There is no risk/reward.
I'm with you. I'd rather a game adapt to condition on the field and opponent tendencies to utilize the same tools the User does. That leaves open the risk/reward opportunities to counter what your opponent is doing. If the game were to start doing that, it would render the "adjust attributes" solution even more meaningless.
Expanding on that, maybe difficulty levels take advanced strategies as way to scale difficulty. On easy, it doesn't adapt. On the Hardest, it adapts to everything. The only problem I see with this is the usual sports gamers battlecry of "Comeback code!"
In NHL, many players solved the "comeback code" by nerfing the AI's ability to change strategies, so it can't get more aggressive late in the game when it is losing, you know, instead of adjusting defensive strategies to protect a lead.
So, I'm not convinced that sim players will ever embrace an AI that actually uses the in-game tools to combat your tendencies. And if that is the case, you can't put sim gamers into easy difficulty, as they won't use it. But I think it would be better than changing the speed and abilities at different levels.