LEM, you may feel you have a point to make about holding your heels off the floor during T/O. If people try and follow your suggestion, I can guarantee we will see exploded tyres/hairy takeoffs/planes off runway/abandoned take-offs. On all 5 jet types and one turboprop I have flown, it has always been powerfully stressed to me to 'firmly keep heels on floor during take-off, and whatever you do, don't touch the toebrakes!' It may be more obvious if you do on the 737, but on heavy jets it will be insidious and you will not feel it. I have had a take-off abandoned because of it, and it involved tyre deflation too. All I can say is don't take any notice of personal speculation. If you do not have autobrakes, it takes but an instant to raise your feet a couple of inches to reach the toebrakes. But if you try and take off a heavy with any braking on, you are going to have a huge problem!
Your point 2 is quite wrong. You only have to press the upper part of the rudder pedal for braking. Push the pedal in a crosswind take off with heel off the floor and you have no way of knowing if you actually have applied braking pressure. By keeping your heel on the floor, you can only press the lower bar so no pressure is applied to the brake system.
I submit 4,700 hours experience on B737 200/400