Well seeing how quickly you've written the game off you probably don't have the patience to persist with the game, and would rather write it off as being 'crap' rather than figure out how to work around and figure out the nuances of the game to actually play it the way it was intended. Well, if you're still willing to play the game rather than rubbish it, here's some help.
1) You're two general play kickers will attempt to be either side of the ruck on the 4th and 5th tackles. Find them and attempt to kick on the fourth if you really need to get the kick away, so if you do get caught you get another chance. You need to release quickly, just because time slows down doesn't mean you have a lot of time, just extend the arrow to get maximum distance, while moving in the general direction and let go as soon as you can. You kick quicker if you are moving as you kick, kicking from a standing start is very slow. Don't let the slow motion fool you though, kicks need to be put away quickly. The best kickers will be there on the fourth and fifth, you just need to find them, they are on both sides of the ruck, just pick them out and quickly pass to them, if you are finding props you are either using a cutout ball from dummy half (practice will prevent this from happening) or not looking to pass to the right men. Find the 7 and pass his direction.
2. Just because the game has issues counting hitups doesn't mean you can't use them. In the end its just a stat and face it, the stats mean pretty much dick in this game anyway. You should probably play NFL games if you want to play for stats rather than victory, because the stats in this game could have been done better, but it doesn't change the gameplay in any way.
3. The flat footed player is practice, and learning how to deal with it when it does happen. Most of it is intuition, after a bit of practice you can tell if a player will be flat footed, you can tell the distance between the dummy half and first receiver and know if he'll get the ball if you pass it in his direction or if he wont get it. Try and hit moving players, use quick taps of the pass button, holding it down will almost guarantee a long pass to a flat footed player. Its just practice, and if you find you keep getting flat footed players, try something different, keep going until you figure it out. The flat footed players are in there to make kicking easier and also to give you options close to the line, it can be annoying when you do find a flat footed man when you need a big hitup, but it wont happen very often once you've figured out the timing and which men you can pass to successfully from dummy half.
That will create the forward pass issues which you will probably complain about once you figure out the passing, because they're a timing thing too. You can change to the player receiving the ball, it comes naturally after a while, and hold back to slow him down if you think the pass may go forward. You'll have to do this fairly often, and may lose some speed on the run, but again, its a timing issue, if you perfect the timing you'll hit every man at full pace and make the most ground. Bad timing will see flat footed receivers and forward passes from dummy half. But you can control the receiver and slow him down by holding the opposite direction he is running to stop a pass from going forward.
Then, if you do have a flat footed receiver, the best bet is to run sideways until you hit full pace, to avoid the tackle, and then run at the defence diagonally and use the step or fend moves to break the line, running an angle you face more one on one defence, and as such, can break the first hit with a move most of the time, sure its not as good as a hitup, but can often lead to an offload or broken tackle, which is better than just taking the flat footed man and running into the defense to be hammered backwards losing ground.
There are two types of league game players. The guys who 'blame the game', call it crap and don't bother trying to make it worth their while to play, sure the best games don't require you to do that, but this is the first league game produced in years. Its worth persisting with. The guys that blame the game stopped playing this game around new year.
Then there are the guys who persisted, mastered the game and got a whole lot more enjoyment out of it both single and multiplayer. They're the people who still play it today, thanks to the mods created for it and the challenge it still provides. Its a great fun game if you give it time, it does require some work to get maximum enjoyment out of it, but I think its worth it.
WCR is fun for a while, but it lacks the depth of league. Once you get your button bashing down pat and figure out the passing, it's very easy to win any game, until you up the difficulty where it gets so annoyingly hard to win its not much fun to play.
If you want to persist with league instead of writing it off, I'd be happy to help out with getting around any other issues you have with the game.
