John Madden dedicates cover to Madden NFL 23 video game; First time in the lead since Madden 2000

In honor of the Madden NFL 23 game of the same name, the cover of the Madden NFL 23 video game will feature one person: John Madden.

Madden, the Hall of Fame coach who died on December 28, will be on the cover of all three editions of this year’s game, which comes out in August. It’s the first time in more than two decades that Madden will be the focal point of the cover, which tends toward the use of today’s athletes.

“We’ve been thinking about this year’s game and who’s going to continue it; it’s almost becoming an obvious answer,” Sean Graddy, Madden NFL executive producer, told ESPN. “I say that because we really wanted to celebrate the coach in the product this year and what he has meant to us for the more than 30 years we’ve been using his name in our game.”

Madden was the last person to be the main cover of the 2000 version of the game, which was released in 1999. He appeared in a small box in the next four versions of the game with his signature and All Madden logo on the side of the main sports cover before disappearing from the cover of Madden NFL 06, which featured Donovan McNab Midfielder for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Then EA switched to using existing athletes to cover each year. Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Quarterback Tom Brady I shared it last year.

Grady told ESPN that putting Madden on the cover was only discussed for this year’s game, but said, “Anything is possible, frankly” about putting the former coach on the cover in the future.

The cover of All Madden – one of the three covers of the year – is reminiscent of the original John Madden Football game, released on June 1, 1988. This cover was a sandy-haired young Madden holding a soccer ball and punching a hole in an X and O diagram on the board with the game’s name on top Square.

The cover of the All Madden edition features a young Madden-like in appearance holding a soccer ball piercing what appears to be a sheet of paper filled with X and O. On the side of the cover, written in white lettering, “Thanks Coach.”

Chuck Styles, a Philadelphia artist who created exclusive trading cards for the Topps in his Project70 edition as well as several works depicting NBA players, designed the cover for All Madden’s edition.

The other two covers, not created by Styles, view Madden as coach and announcer. The cover of the broadcast Madden wears a blue shirt and tie and appears to be drawing on a telestrator, for which he became famous throughout his career. The coaching cap has Madden, who coached the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978, raised by his players after their victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI.

“The thing we wanted to take away from everyone, is that we celebrate all three phases of the Coach Madden legacy,” Grady said.

Madden was immersed in the game from the start, demanding it be 11 vs 11, and handing the old playbook to game developers to create more realism. As the game grew, so did its impact on players. Several current NFL players say Madden was part of their upbringing – Detroit Lions defensive linebacker Jeff Okuda He told ESPN in 2020 that he learned soccer by playing Madden – and that’s always been a point of pride for the game of the same name.

“It gives you satisfaction because you’re doing something worthwhile,” Madden told ESPN in 2021. the game.

“It helps them become better players. And I think that goes for high school, college and the pros. There’s a real sense of satisfaction that you see when someone puts it forward.”

While not many gameplay features have been announced for this year’s release, Grady said the inaugural experience will feature two versions of Madden training from the 1970s against each other – one leading the NFC All Madden team and the other the AFC All Madden team – at the old Auckland Coliseum.

“It’s just a fun fantasy experience where Coach Madden versus Coach Madden,” Grady said. “With a callback from the All Madden teams he used to create that we used to have in our game, a mix of legendary players and current players.

“Honestly, thinking about why we want Coach versus Coach is because we want Coach to win.”

Grady said that during that experience, there will be lines that Madden spoke interspersed with comments about some of the players on the All Madden rosters.

As part of the cover announcement, EA announced that its $5 million donation to the John Madden Legacy Commitment for Education will be split, with $2.5 million going to nonprofits College Track, Girls Who Code, StreetCode Academy, and Mission Bit to support five years of programming in science fields. Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. The other $2.5 million will help create the EA Madden Scholarship, which will work with the United Negro College Fund to provide scholarships to students at 12 historically black colleges and universities.