When I sim games, I see a reasonable number of interceptions (~1 per game between both teams). But when I play them out, it seems like neither I nor the AI throw picks. And I’m playing the 1996 Jeff George-Falcons, not quite Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady haha.

Are there any in-game tweaks to increase interceptions when playing out the games?

The engine is the same either way. The only difference would be blitzes have to be called manually by human teams. Maybe in your simmed games you're blitzing more than you do when you play them out.

Thank you! Probably a sample size problem then.