I know the feeling Dork. I was a long time Madden fan until this year. I went out and bought ESPN because Madden IMO is a poor game this year. Shootout after shootout because of poor defensive AI got old quick. Not to mention that it feels almost the same as last years version. I had to get something different. But ESPN has too many flaws also. You've pretty much covered the majority of the problems in your post. Slider adjustments doesn't solve the problems either. You're either cheating yourself or cheating the CPU when you make slider adjustments from what the developers intended.
Oh well there's always next year
(**Remembers that's the exact same thing I said last year**)