A Matter of Control

While reading the GameSpot Sports Game Forum this morning, I happened upon an interesting thread by a GameSpot reader calling himself JAMPro. The theme of his post was execution in football games, specifically in the passing game. To his way of thinking, throwing the ball in a modern-day NFL console game doesn't seem to match up with how he was taught to play the game in real life. A quote from JAMPro:

When throwing to flags and out routes you're supposed to throw to the receiver's outside shoulder, but when you play Madden( whether a real opponent or computer ) your throw just about always is drawn to the defender as if you're throwing to the defender.

As another astute reader pointed out in the same thread, some games offer more finely tuned control over pass location, such as ESPN's Maximum Passing feature. That said, is it too much to ask that an NFL quarterback, or his videogame counterpart, know how to lead a receiver on a crossing route without having to resort to specialized control schemes?

What do you think? Should gamers have an extra level of fine-tuned control when passing in NFL and college games? Or should we expect just a bit more from the virtual athletes in the game? Let's hear what you've got to say in JAMPro's thread, or here in the comments thread of this post!