Madden is Madden’s latest cover star

polygon.com:

Madden NFL23’s cover star is … John Madden himself.

The Hall of Fame coach, broadcaster, and namesake of EA Sports’ longest-running series died Dec. 28, 2021, at 85. Madden NFL 23 will remember him with three different covers, representing the legacies he left to the NFL, television, and video games.

“There are so many ways that we’re trying to live up to, aspire to, the legend that Coach Madden was, in our game this year,” Mike Mahar, EA Tiburon’s senior producer for the Madden NFL series, told media last week at a preview event and cover reveal for the forthcoming game.

The “interactive first experience” of Madden NFL 23 — playable as the game is installing — will pit two generations of All-Madden NFL stars against each other, both sides coached by Madden as he appeared in different periods of his career. The game is played in a throwback rendering of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, where Madden led the Oakland Raiders to a 103-32-7 record from 1969 to 1978.

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On one cover, Madden is at the Rose Bowl celebrating his Oakland Raiders’ 32-14 victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI. In the second, he is wearing a broadcaster’s headset and scribbling pass patterns on the viewer’s screen; Madden was an analyst for all four over-the-air networks that aired NFL games from 1979 to 2008.

Madden NFL 23’s All Madden Edition cover is a tribute to the cover of the first Madden title, John Madden Football, which Electronic Arts published in 1988. In the adaptation by Philadelphia artist Chuck Styles, Madden bursts through a playbook full of X’s and O’s, like pro football’s Kool-Aid Man.

“A pervasive theme this year is living up to the standard and the passion that Coach had for authentic, 11 v. 11 football,”