I was on the fence about buying this game.  It seams that every year I buy the new game and every year after about the first few months of football season I end up shelving the game never to play it again.  I like football, its my favorite sport.  Im just really dumb win it comes to playing it.  Maybe its because I never played in high school or anything.  I read an article on joysitq that sold me on buying the game and so far does the best job of summing up why I like it so much compared to previous years.   Here is the link..
 
 http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/09/madden-nfl-11-preview/
 
The artice mainly covers the new Gameflow feature.  When I first heard about this feature I thought they might have ruined the game making it too easy, or this would be a new lame feature that no one would really use  (like the passing cone).  Its not much different from using the "Ask Madden" pick from the past games , its actually still there.  I did find myself calling audibles several times, (more than I normally would have) its was very easy and a lot less rushed like in previous games.  
 
well thats enough for now,  just wanted to get a positive thread going on this game and see who else has been pleasantly surprised by their enjoyment of the new features.

I completely agree, by far one of the better versions.  The new locomotion system makes the game control a lot better, and they really upped the presentation.  
 
Also, they FINALLY made playing the super bowl fun and exciting.

gameflow is a neat gimick..... its ask madden... minus the asking.  It is good for "new" players coming to the madden-sphere.  I think it will help those gamers who just wanna play a game, and play it quicker.  it doesnt help hardcore gamers like me.  i will say that this game is not dissappointing me as much as I thought it would, but running the ball was WAY to easy in my first game, and I play as the Texans....

My first game was on the default setting and I beat the Redskins 39 -9 with the Panthers.  It was really easy.  The default setting is Pro.  I think AllPro is the difficulty setting when you play online.  I will definitely change it for my next game.
 
Could someone who knows more than me tell what difficulty setting online play is set to?

It comes out on Friday here, so I'll have to wait :(  But this will be my 6th Madden game in a row, and 8th football game in a row. I'm never disappointed by Madden games, but just like you, I'm usually putting the game away around October/November, but then again, I play the game more or less every day in that time period (becase it's relaxing, and I can do other stuff while playing it, listen to music, podcasts etc.) But I look forward to it, the only thing I want EA to focus on now, is the franchise mode offline, and maybe even Super Star mode, I could use some deeper features in those departments.

I would be nice if they actually made an effort to improve the game as a whole like the nhl games do instead of just saying "yo football" every year

I think they did make an effort to improve it, it's just that it wasn't quite as broken as NHL in the first place.  Also, football has more players on the field, more collisions between those players, and generally a lot more complicated stuff going on, so it's tough to get it all to work right.  Anyway, as long as they still let me do a fantasy draft so I can have an otherwise-stacked team with a terrible QB, and then slowly improve his stats over the course of a few seasons to the point that he's awesome, then I'm happy.

I like the new gameflow feature makes playing with friends better as my friends are not into nfl

For a Madden newbie this is finally the game to get. Past years were just so hard to get into. Dense and overwhelming is an understatement. You had to dedicate your life to figure everything out because the instructions don't tell you anything. Gameflow takes the biggest hurdle away and thats play calling. It may be ask Madden 2.0 but at least its customizable, faster, and you don't here his voice.