We all know how mindnumbingly frustrating football can be irl. So long as it doesn't completely cripple offenses or destroy the need to build a defence, I'm fine with some randomness.

Not only ridiculous amount of drops, but I look at game logs and see things like my team run-keying on 3rd and 10. Huh?

This should be all in your control, the AI should never do any keying by itself with the exception that if your opponent overuses a certain play one of the benefits you get is that your team correctly keys against it.

Noob question: What does the "key" part mean?

It means your defense is playing run first or pass first. You get an advantage if you call correctly and a disadvantage if you call incorrectly.

Each version has its own nuances, and a few have more different than others. In previous versions, like 4.1 & 4.2, the general complaint was "madden-like offense & scoring", which was a valid complaint but really only showed when a winning team was playing a losing team that had a below average secondary and pass rush. I won my first LC in 4.1 on a 9-8 score, which generally happened when you had two good teams with two good defenses playing each other.

4.5 has shown to be a definite swing in favor of the defense. Catch allowed %'s are down an average of 20-30% along with QB rating stats. If you prefer winning to losing, you will need to adapt your roster and game to it, and that takes spending some time reviewing player attributes and play selection, altering your trade, FA, and draft priorities, and getting a good "sim". There are also facets of the game that are completely overlooked and/or ignored by many owners, which you can discover or figure out by looking at your team and player stats, or getting tips/advice from owners who are consistent winners. cheers

Um no. Parity takes away any owner vs owner gameplanning and with parity, it wouldn't matter who is on your team. It really would make the game less fun if every game's outcome was a "coin flip". Parity would ruin the game, trust me. And many owners who enjoy the gameplanning aspect would leave.

Also, I have seen (and been a part of) some games where there are 9-10 INTs total for the game. It's no fun when you have both teams out there throwing picks all the time. Not realistic. 2-3 INTs would be more realistic per game, not 9-10...lol

The NFL single game record for A SINGLE PLAYER is 4 INT in a game.

Having 4-7 INTs per team (total 8+) might not be what we're used to seeing, but that doesn't make it entirely unrealistic.

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The top 2 QB's in L-75 which is the league I believe Michael77 is talking about here.... have 31 INT's through 8 games. That is unrealistic.

Edit to add...they both have 100% accuracy