Okay well I had a chance to play two games... AA default sliders / Simulation / Normal game speed

Game 1: Jacksonville (me) 10 Philly 7 (from London)

* Fournette 16 carries 121 yards 1 TD
* 2 penalties (both holding)
* BOTH QB's struggled with accuracy
* 8 sacks in total... four per team
* most sacks came from play action (doesn't seem to work well)
* as per madden crap, way too many pass deflections


Game 2: NO (me) 28 Jacksonville 6 (CFM Exhibition week 1)

* run game feels good for the most part~ still a lot of stuffs in the backfield
* 17 pass deflections combined (11 for Jax 6 for NO
* three penalties (2 holding 1 offside)
* play of Bortles was embarrassingly bad...

The Good:
* visually stunning~ xbox one x this is the best I have ever seen a sports game look
* pre game intros are really good~ I just wish they were longer
* game loads quicker from last year
* player archetypes really speeds up player progression (but does impact user control)
* ability to choose which week to start your season (exhibition or regular)
* running the ball is a lot of fun and jukes work incredibly well when in the open field
* RB trucking and breaking tackles... Fournette was a beast!
* seems to be more uniforms available this year
* uniform degradation looks great


The Bad:
* no halftime show from around the league during play now OR during the exhibition season
* still only sub 2nd stringers during exhibition. All others must be manually subbed
* way too many pass deflections and deflections which lead to interceptions
* minimal suggestions for suggested play calling (just as poor as last year)
* no longer have the ability to manually change who the primary receiver will be on pass plays (why would this be removed?)
* too many tackles in the backfield for a loss


Other:

* it still looks, sounds and feels like madden and the things you hate you will always hate (eg receivers get hit and drop the ball way, way too much)
* very minimal changes to CFM (yes they did some big changes to certain things but it falls far short of what they needed to do
* poor blocking logic continues to plague the series
* the coach screen while nice at first offers nothing for immersion
* looks like the twitter feed is pretty much the same as before

Now that's only 2 hours worth but it's like I figured and very similar to what I played last month during the beta. I passed on the game last year and I'm still on the fence this year. Once I get to regular season and see a real halftime show then I will have a better feel for the immersion.