Depends on whether you want realism or fun. Hopefully, you can have both. But I'll take the former over the latter any day. Otherwise, I'd stick with Madden and the likes.

I think your idea of realism is different than mine. I think 20+ dump offs in a game is completely unrealistic. With that 4.3 was the worst code of any that i can remember with guys throwing for 80-100 tds in a season, lol. I think 4.4 has potential if the down field game can be accessed. While it's a tough transition from seeing the high powered offenses, i think the problem is how far the pendulum keeps swinging from one way to the other. I can't even bear to watch a game on new code all the way through but i'm confident that it will be fixed. I will always hold out hope that eventually MFN will be a game where many styles can win titles and there will be more variety of plays and game styles but until then we just have to keep adapting to what each code gives us. To me the game will really take off when a whole new slew of plays get added on both sides of the ball. With a stable code this will dramatically change the fun factor for many of us :)

v4.3 attempted to neutralize and neuter the over the top, let it fly game plan. The hot routes and big gainers got funneled elsewhere. The top contenders through determination and wanting to win figured out how to still succeed while through tons of game film study and dedication built game plans accordingly. Open things up through siphoning the high impact yardage gains through dump offs to the RB position and the TE in specific pass plays. Cool. Those who work their *** off could still figure out a way to contend.

v4.4 is lets strip all of what top GMs learned in v4.3 away (erasure of knowledge) and also fire up the heat on the nth degree (endless sacks and DE pressure) to make sure even more over the top yardage gains are quelled. Essentially, the goal is to strive for giving everyone an equal chance and for someone not to be able to find a way to consistently move the ball with long strikes and big yardage gains. All living in the window of short strikes (18 for 21 intervals) where the QB gets 99 yards moving at a snail-like pace across the field.

But, see, I don't even look at each game as an opponent any more but rather a chance to buck this and not allow this development to stop me but to figure a way around it.

That's the competitor in me. :)

Maybe it's play calling that's partly to blame for the drop off. My offense hasn't lost a beat - 436 yds per game this season (three games only) vs. 437 yds per game last season.

In my last game, my QB threw to a RB on 13 out of 42 pass plays - not counting plays where my QB was sacked. Some of the passes would be dump offs. Some would be where the RB was the intended targeted receiver all along. On top of that, my RBs generally are excellent pass receivers, i.e., high RR and PC ability. So they shake their coverage and get open frequently. Is that too many passes under under the circumstances?? IDK.

One thing is for sure. If you keep your backs in to block, there would not be many dump offs.

I agree that it would be nice to have more plays on both offense and defense.Hopefully, when the mechanics of the game are better perfected that will come to pass.

While I love MFN, this is the most discouraging aspect of the game to me. Every version brings massive changes, not little tweaks. Then we have to throw out weights and game plans and strategies and hours and hours of work and start over.

I will admit not knowing much about programming and game development. But, after X years, shouldn't we be arriving soon at the "tweaks" stage? Or, is this a normal development timeline?

0.4.3 and 0.4.4 massively overhauled most of the game engine that was preventing the game from evolving.

Remember prior to 0.4.3, QBs only read one receiver at a time and coverage was basically SP on SP. 0.4.3 allowed QBs to read multiple receivers, made SP parabolic, and started to add more coverage abilities by allowing DBs to use B&R to slow down WRs. 0.4.4 fixed some of the coverage bugs, changed the QB accuracy calculations, and made QBs begin to anticipate throws. 0.4.3-0.4.4 are a completely new game compared to the game engine of 0.4.2.

0.4.5 is going to be a true tweak to the 0.4.4 game engine. Here's what is coming:

1) QB's make decisions faster and look to receivers running the route distance of the play call first

2) OL pass blocking has been adjusted to account for the faster decision making. DL can get pressure on QBs without getting a ridiculously high number of sacks. (In the first rounds of testing, there were no sacks as soon as QBs were making decisions as fast as they should.)

3) DB M2M coverage will be vastly improved. DBs were losing their man when the ball was in the air. This was actually the cause of all of the pass long offenses of 0.4.3. This has been addressed. Additionally, DBs will use B&R much more effectively to grab receivers to regain their positions. Defensive Holding is being added to counteract. Finally, DBs will try to grab receivers if they know they are going to have their M2M cover beaten on a cut. Again, there is a chance for Defensive Holding and a greater chance of DPI on this.

4) Safeties in zone cover (and I assume CBs in Cover 3) will [hopefully] read and react better when the ball is in the air. Right now, Safeties over pursue upfield and run past the play (this has happened for multiple releases). This is being fixed right now. That means that you can play a cover 1, 2, or [hopefully] 3 more effectively even though Zone coverage is not actively being worked on. This is because one of the major failures of Zone right now is reading the ball in the air.

What all this means to y'all.

1) It appears that medium passes are much more effective while long passes are not ridiculously overpowered. I want to do some testing of different game plans in MNF-1 since I've only been watching film in alpha servers based on a copy of a league with experienced owners.

2) Slower DBs with good B&R are much more effective, so drafts won't be full of wasted DBs.

3) Slower WRs/TEs with good skills are still valuable because they can draw penalties or still make plays against faster players.

Ok, if this is where you're going with the defense, providing defenders with multiple aids to enhance and protect like a glove. Disrupters such as hand checks, route halting techniques and built-in big play halting mechanisms (Defensive Holding/Turnstile Prevention Holding and DPIs) then...

It's time to layer offense strategies and ways to counter-act/disrupt defenders from off the hand checking, grabbing and big play halting techniques.

Introduce new offensive plays across the board but particularly toss in reverse style runs (which won't work if pounded on/streamed with rules) but in the fabric of an offense if per se the defensive is in Goal-Line Zone Defense with a Pass Key, it's Au Revoir. It gets blasted.

Or from the other side, flea flicker style plays (2 ish introduced over the offensive sets) and again if someone tries to rule pound it...it fails horribly but if you're running and mashing the ball and then pop it off....the play has the ability to hit for 1-2 times for big gains in a game. (catching an opponent in Shallow Zone Deep per se, run key = defense is toast)

Offense is going to need more layers/levels now to match the defensive improvement and to provide ways to strat around the system and not be resigned to 5-10 yard carve outs, slow methodical marches both on the ground and through the air.

0.4.5 should address most of the lack of downfield throws. I say most because it's not going to ever be the wild west days of 0.4.3 again or 0.4.2 for that matter.

But, and I ask this in all seriousness, how much actual professional football do you watch? The reason that I'm confused is that the slow, methodical march using short-to-intermediate passes is how professional football is played. Sure, there are highlight reel 40-60 yard bombs by someone every week, but these are rare over the course of a game.

For instance, 2018 was a banner year for passers with two QBs over 5,000 yards and another one over 4,900. Yet, if you look into those yards, they were achieved mostly by volume passing.

Here's a quick stat break down of the top 5 QBs by yards thrown.

QB - Yards - Avg Attempted Air Yard Distance - Avg Completed Air Yard Distance - Longest in the Air

Roethlisberg - 5130 - 7.7 - 4.8 - 52.9
Mahomes - 5097 - 9.2 - 6.4 - 60.7
Ryan - 4924 - 8.5 - 6.5 - 54.9
Goff - 4688 - 8.8 - 7 - 62.7
Luck - 4593 - 7.6 - 6.1 - 51.7

Here's where stats need to be broken down more. You'd think that someone like Mahomes is throwing 9 yard distance routes every down, but that's not how averages work. The truth is that Mahomes throws a lot of <5 yard routes and then he uncorks a 40-60 yard bomb. Everyone sees the 40-60 yard bomb, and forgets that he's thrown 10-15 passes before that were < 5 yard routes.

You have to take into account the one big play a game issue when looking at the average air yards completed too for the same reason.

All that said, I perfectly agree that we need more plays. But, more importantly, all coaches should have access to all of the plays so that we could build better customized playbooks. I want that more than more plays.

Although, I would rather spend my time creating plays than alpha / beta testing.

Link for reference: https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/passing#yards

First of all, completely agreed on all Coaches should have access to each and every play because, in particular, there's one Goal-Line Set where extreme advantages can be had via possessing certain outside runs or particular Long Pass plays. The set fluctuates on its usefulness based on if you have access to these plays. Or to take it on a 4 and 5-Wide level those sets certain playbooks are much more expansive than others. There's two examples.

Now for the rest of your post...

I'm a diehard New York Giants fan and I understand the science to the sport and the pitter-patter to how it operates. First series, pound Barkley twice up the middle or with an edge run and than Eli connects with an out route at the marker to get the first. Odell is getting doubled, therefore, he has to look elsewhere. Can't just Madden mash him on fly patterns for endless touchdowns. Teams set up defenses for the long ball with play action passes, rushing and chicanery to open it up. It goes on and on, I get it. :)

However, we put a ton of prep into setting up our teams for a season and a lot of the fun is hitting those home run ***** and seeing your hard work come to fruition for that fist pumping excitement. It's about balance and realism. Not one extreme or the other as Tribewriter put it.

Basically, lets say I'm facing a GM whom is making every defensive set matching against my offensive set mistake in the book and is always in the wrong key, there shouldn't be so many protections put in place through all these changes that my team can't take advantage and/or that we lose the game.

The game shouldn't protect them from a long pass or two not connecting in the game through sheer 'this is how the game is now.'