Dan and I played half a game at lunch online (Dan Bears, my Raiders) to see what it's like.
Neither one of us looked in the options or anything, so we were stuck with missing strategy pad quick links and auto strafe (which can't be adjusted in-game, strangely), so it was a bit chaotic.
First thing that cropped up: holy crap are the Bears DT's bad. Like Bill referenced before, I was having 5 to 7 yards untouched every snap almost. The first offensive play of the game for me was an 80 yard TD scamper by McFadden right up the gut. But that came after I badly misplayed a flag route on Dan's opening possession and he took THAT one like 80 yards to the house as well.
But running the ball was glaring...the Bears just absolutely could not stop the run, and we're talking about simple Gameflow play calls here. The Raiders seemed to call a more aggressive defense (3 or 4 plays where an overload blitz just blasted through the gap in the OL come to mind) and kept Forte more in check...but McFadden ended the
half with like 12 carries for 160 yards or something insane.
The passing game is much tighter IMO. The ball had to be thrown on time, and if it was, the completions came quickly. But Terrelle Pryor (yes, he's there, and I put him in for the first series just to see) and Jay Cutler could fire balls a good 10 yards off target. One post route by Pryor (his only throw of the game) was so far off Dan didn't know who it was to. That was cool. Cutler throwing a drag route 5 yards out of bounds on 3rd down was funny, though.
Overall, it seemed to have a really fun little engine going on there. With no suction blocking, we were both able to get through the line and apply pressure regularly. I obviously only have a handful of snaps to base it off of, but it felt like the internal clock was about right. If you were on offense and didn't throw when your plant foot hit the ground, you were probably going to get blasted. If you're on defense and you get close enough to apply pressure, you can force an errant throw. But on the occasions when Dan and I were afforded time, the darts flew and felt VERY good. It just seemed to feel tighter than past years, but I'm sure that can change with 15 games played instead of 1 half on 10 minute quarters.
All in all, other than our obvious rust (we both made some absolutely comical misplays on the ball on defense, leading to a 45 point HALF of football), it looks like it could really be fun. And I'd be curious to see if the running game is as powerful as Bill says...because early returns are exactly that. But again, the Raiders were #2 on the ground last year, so it's tough to get a feel from a single half. But I felt like I could run at will through the heart of Dan's defense, which was pretty decent last I checked. Half of that may have been Dan running Urlacher out of position and gasping at air, but it's like nobody knew the run was coming. Then again, Bill mentioned that he put up 300 on the Bears too...maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it's just
the Bears 
One thing I thought was cool--presnap, you cannot see who the opponent is controlling. So if I'm sitting there controlling Seymour and waiting to bust through the line, he can't tell unless I move before the snap or something. Post-snap you can see the cursor come up, but it leads to an interesting cat-and-mouse game before the snap. This may have been in there in past years, but I can't recall. I barely even played 11 online.
