The Late John Madden To Grace Cover Of Madden 23 Video Game

Iconic football coach and sports commentator John Madden returns to the “Madden” cover after 22 years.

As part of a tribute to the late John Madden, who passed away last year, Madden will be coming back to grace the cover of Madden 2023, EA Sports announced on Wednesday.

In addition, the video game developer will be adding him to two others covers that will “pay tribute to a different chapter in Coach Madden’s unforgettable life.”

“We were thinking about this year’s game and who was going to go on it; it almost became an obvious answer,” Seann Graddy, the executive producer of Madden NFL, told ESPN in an interview. “I say that because we really wanted to celebrate Coach in the product this year and what he’s meant to us for the 30-plus years that we’ve been using his name in our game.”

The beloved coach was inducted into the professional Football Hall of Fame back in 2006 as the coach of the Oakland Raiders. Since its creation in 1988, Madden has sold more than 130 copies and generated at least $4 billion, CNN Business reports.

The EA Madden NFL Twitter page announced that the full reveal of the covers is set to debut on June 2.

The #Madden23 cover… Coach‼️

Full reveal June 2nd: https://t.co/M3Il0XW40c pic.twitter.com/DTI9FqA5bL

— Madden NFL 24 (@EAMaddenNFL) June 1, 2022