Simmed game Stats questions

[gambler]

I've been vaguely concerned while reading some of the threads about the potential realism of the stats, but have been mollified by knowing that almost everything is changeable (except for the AI which hopefully plays a decent game). Since I've dealt with pushing sliders around on EA's games, that's not much of an issue.

What is an issue is whether these changeable elements reflect on the Simmed games. Awhile back, it was stated that the sim engine was modified to NOT run a game in the same manner as a 'played out' game (in other words, it wasn't going to be CPU vs CPU without the graphics) but was going to be run using a seperate model. Will these sims also be affected by the changes made by users to end up with statistical results that they like?

The most basic questions here are:

1. Will the simmed games and the 'played' games (specifically a CPU vs CPU played out game) result in comparable stats?
2. If settings are changed (and I'm not quite sure what these settings are... just player ratings?) will the simmed games also be affected appropriately? If not, this is a HUGE issue for me. My impression is that the ways to modify the stats are to modify player attributes and gameplans which implies that anything changed will change the simmed games as well as the 'watched' games. If not, please let me know as I do NOT want to buy a game where there's a major difference between the simmed games stats and the 'watched' ones (such that for instance, my halfback gains near 2000 yards every season while everyone else struggles to reach 1500).
3. Is there still a way to sim out a game using the 'played game' engine? I've always stated (and a few others have echoed) that they'd prefer it to remain an option even if it took longer than development thought would be worthwhile. It seemed like that method was 'done' at one time, and everything since has implied that the feature has been removed from the game. This isn't a deal killer for me as long as the simmed and watched games are comparable stats wise and remain comparable even when the game is customized.

Thanks in advance.
Robert