There is a very minor decrease in intensity when a team is up by more than 3 touchdowns, but as soon as the losing team closes the gap to 3 touchdowns that immediately turns back off. This is only there to prevent college-type blowouts, which rarely happen in the NFL and still happen here but with limited frequency. There are a few other factors that might be coming into play:
* The crowd noise could come into play - if the home team is getting blown out and then starts to come back, the crowd may get back into the game. Conversely, if the home team is blowing out the visiting team some of that could be from the crowd noise, which will die down as the game becomes less exciting.
* Sometimes there does seem to be a momentum with the dice rolls - this is not simulated, in fact I was going to add this to the simulation but was surprised to find that it seemed to happen naturally somehow. If you have a first half where all the dice rolls go in favor of one team, that may not stay in their favor in the second half.
* When a team goes into hurry up mode, they start to throw more. This is a more effective offense than running (higher risk, higher reward). Note that the more you throw, the higher the risk, which is in the engine to prevent you from willingly having an unbalanced arial attack, but if the team who is behind hasn't been throwing a lot their QB will be relatively fresh and may have some level of improved success.
To parsh's comment, there is no "trap game" simulation, again something I considered but seems to happen naturally. Ultimately, the difference between most starters in any league is not terribly significant, so unless you have a team of all scrubs you should have a fighting chance on "any given Sunday," as it were.
Last edited at 4/20/2015 7:10 am