It's June, and like every year around this time, EA has just revealed the next cover of Madden NFL. For Madden 22, EA opted for two of the NFL's biggest stars, featuring both Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes on the cover of the MVP edition.
The choices here aren't particularly surprising. Both appeared in Super Bowl 2020, both are star quarterbacks of their respective franchises, and both hold a whole lot of records. Mahomes holds the record for fastest to 10,000 career passing yards, fastest 100 career touchdowns, highest career quarterback rating, and most consecutive 300-plus passing yard games. He's also won the 2019 Super Bowl, was that year's Super Bowl MVP, and was the NFL's overall MVP in 2018.
Tom Brady, however, has won seven Super Bowls including last year's (which is also a record), holds records for most quarterback games played, most games started, most combined passing yards, most combined touchdown passes, and most game-winning drives, and is widely considered the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.
So get them both on the cover and you have what EA calls "the greatest cover of all time."
But what about that leak? Last February, a Madden 22 cover appeared on social media showing Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry. He wore 22, led the league in rushing yards and touchdowns in 2020, and was the eighth player in NFL history to rush more than 2,000 yards in a single season.
That’s a lot of 2s, which made it seem like he’d be a shoo-in for the Madden 22 cover, but I guess EA had a different idea for this year.
It should also be noted that this year’s cover is far more simplistic than previous years. Usually, Madden hosts a photoshoot with the cover star and then touches things up with photography software, but this cover seems uncharacteristically plain. It’s also a return to in-person photo shoots after last year’s purely digital cover. With two people sitting side-by-side, EA is likely making a reference to the end COVID-19 pandemic--although it’s not technically over just yet.