Madden NFL 25 Cover Athlete Is Christian McCaffrey, Releases August 16

While the hot rumor had been Joe Burrow due to some fake covers that were circulating, EA has unveiled the real cover for Madden NFL. The cover athlete is San Francisco 49ers running back and do-it-all offensive dynamo Christian McCaffrey.

Overall, EA chose to go light on information with this announcement, re-confirming a release date of August 16 (early access begins on the August 13) and then showing off both the standard edition and deluxe covers for Madden NFL 25. With the press release today, EA said more news will be “announced soon” as well. Prior to this announcement, EA had set a countdown clock for June 13 for more information, and I would suspect that date may still matter as the Madden NFL 25 beta is set to begin on June 13 as of now. Of course, EA could change that date if needed but there has been no word about that as of now.

You can pre-order the game right now, and the most intriguing pre-order bundle remains the previously announced dual-game bundle that includes EA Sports College Football 25 and Madden NFL 25. Speaking of EA’s college football game, the lack of info released today by the Madden team might just be a “new normal” of sorts as back in the day the Madden news was usually a little light until NCAA Football was released. I would think EA’s marketing teams are trying to keep the anticipation levels high for each game, which means the marketing blitz for Madden might not truly go supersonic until after the release of EA Sports College Football 25.

As for the cover athlete, McCaffrey is the first running back to be on the cover since Barry Sanders was on the “last” version of Madden 25 (otherwise known as Madden ’14). CMC is the first “active” running back to be on the cover since Peyton Hillis with Madden 2012 — an infamous year of fan voting for the cover. The “Madden Curse” has fallen by the wayside in recent years so Niners fans likely just have to worry about the usual wear and tear concerns that come with having a 28-year-old running back who has had a heavy workload to this point in his career.

If EA releases any other information today, we’ll have further updates, and again we do think it’s likely this is not the last of the Madden NFL 25 news for this week.

Madden NFL 25 will be available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC via EA app for Windows, Steam and Epic Games Store.