Fired in Madden 21 Franchise mode without playing in a single game

So I have only recently started following American Football and decided to get Madden 21 as it was on sale. I’m playing the Franchise mode.

I don’t know enough about the way the draft works, or setting up teams etc so I decided to go through as a player rather than a coach. I also opted to control just my player (QB), rather than the whole team.

I like to make things a little challenging for myself, so decided to have myself as a mid round pick and opted against putting myself as an automatic starter, so I thought I would need to prove myself in pre-season, then gain XP over time to try and get my way into the starting team. However, I chose the Detroit Lions who aren’t so good. Had an ok pre-season where I got at least a quarter in each game and we went 3-1. We ended up starting the season 1-4 and I had yet to play a single game. I kept getting messages from opposing players between games with trash talk etc, but where I had no direct control over the outcome of the game, I failed to gain the extra XP. On game week 7 (6 was a bye), I get a message from the coach telling me if I don’t pick up my performances, then I’ll be cut. That was a bit frustrating as I had yet to play a single minute of a season game.

We end up losing the next game, again I haven’t played a single minute, and afterwards am greeted with a message from the coach telling me I had been cut for poor performances. What the hell? I could deal with the bugs where sometimes the training wouldn’t work, but this was just a huge annoyance. My career had ended before it had even started as for some reason you never seem to get drafted again. Is there any way around this? Or do I just need to start again but make myself an automatic starter, even though I am less than 10 overall points behind the starting QB?