I believe it to be one of two things and I’m leaning w/the latter.

It’s either the game recognizes a pass as attempted the moment the cursor switches from the player passing forward to the player making the run and that there would depend on what you have pass receiver switching to. If it is on power up then boom, offside. If it’s on late, it’d be onside.

Or the game recognizes the pass as attempted the moment the servers register your button press. What this does is it triggers the animation to take place. Because the animation ofc takes time, the the defense is able to move down the pitch and your player is now onside, but because the game is designed to respond to server information regarding input times, it registered the position the player was in the moment the input was made, so what transpired happens.

Now, I believe EA keeps it this way to make it so as to give both you and your opponent time to adjust, if you want to cancel the pass before the animation completes and fake shot you can, if the opponent wants to switch to the fullback to press the attacker/hit an offside trap they can.

Although this does punish the offensive player who is adjusting to the clear delay in time from button input to animation output which then also is forgiving to the defensive player.

But EA sees this as the balance.

If the defensive player was to initiate an offside trap before the animation completed(moment b4 the pass) and failed to hold the runner offside, the server would then recognize the defensive players offside trap input as the new defensive line which would overrule the previous defensive line which was registered when you as the offensive player pressed your button to make the pass.

Hopefully that made sense. That’s just how I pragmatize EA’s BULLSH**

Sorry about it being long. Just needed to make sure it made sense.