Ravens Lamar Jackson officially revealed as cover athlete for Madden NFL 21

The moment that NFL fans, Baltimore Ravens fans, and sports gamers have been waiting for has officially arrived and even though he spoiled the surprise back in April, on Tuesday morning EA Sports officially featured Baltimore Ravens quarterback and reigning league MVP, Lamar Jackson, as the cover athlete for Madden 21 set to be released on August 25th of this year.

“With style and swag uniquely his own, reigning NFL MVP Lamar Jackson dazzles on the new Madden NFL 21 cover as he does against the opposition on gameday,” EA Sports wrote on its Madden website. “Dynamic agility and blazing speed make the Baltimore Ravens superstar QB untouchable in the open field. The face of a fearless new generation of rising NFL stars, Jackson has changed the game.”

It truly is a dream come true for the young signal-caller that has galvanized and electrified not just his own franchise but the entire league with his electric style of play and gregarious personality in his breakout sophomore season in 2019. Every kid that has ever played the video game growing up or the actual game of football at any level has envisioned themselves on the cover of Madden striking a signature pose or in an action shot of an awe-inspiring play.

“It’s always been a dream of mine since I was a little kid since I first started playing Madden. It’s dope. I have every Madden. To me, to be on the front of it, it’s a dream come true.”

Jackson joins Hall of Fame middle linebacker and Ravens’ legendary icon Ray Lewis as the only players in franchise history to be featured on the cover of the popular video game. Lewis made his debut in 2005 and was actually the first-ever defensive player to be selected as the cover athlete.

Much like this offseason and Jackson himself, the cover of this year’s Madden is unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before. It comes in three different yet distinct versions: standard, deluxe, and MVP. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Jackson was not able to have the standard photoshoot with EA’s photographers so they improvised by reaching out to Ravens’ official team photographer Shawn Hubbard for some of his best shots of the reigning MVP from this past season.

It just came out of the blue,” Hubbard said via the official team website. “We were on lockdown with COVID and I know they usually have a shoot for it. It just wasn’t something I expected with all the other bad news happening. … I’m a little embarrassed to say that I’ve never played Madden – ever. Maybe they’ll send me a copy and I’ll get started.”

“Those are the types of images that I live for.”

The standard has a center image of Jackson warming up before the Ravens’ Monday Night Football matchup with the Los Angeles Rams this past season and is surrounded by smaller images of him running the ball in a game, laughing while walking off the field, the back of his jersey and smiling in practice. It also features the text ‘Generation Rising’, acknowledging that he if redefining how both the game and the quarterback position is played.

The deluxe has a center image of Jackson spinning a football on his finger during pre-game warm-ups, two shots of him looking stoic and laser-focused, a shot of one the best action shots of his career when he hurdled his former Louisville teammates Jaire Alexander in a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers and a close up of his famous African wild dog gold chain that shows off his unique style (he has the same image of the dog plastered on several pieces of his official apparel from his clothing line).

The MVP version features just one black and white image that is more in the traditional portrait style that they use for their covers that have Jackson looking intensely focused before a game. It also features perhaps the most popular of Jackson’s patented quotes ‘NOT BAD FOR A RUNNING BACK” in all capital letters, a bold reminder to all the doubters and detractors that believed he wouldn’t make it as a quarterback in the league that they were wrong.

If we have gleaned anything from the NFL stars that have graced the cover of Madden in recent years, it is that the fabled and infamous ‘Madden curse’ is no longer a bad omen that plagues the following season of the cover athlete with sorrow and misfortune. It has actually become the exact opposite of a curse for two of the last three cover athletes especially.

Tom Brady was the cover of Madden 18 after leading the greatest comeback in Superbowl history in the 2016 postseason and was back in the big game the following year. Patrick Mahomes was the cover of Madden 20 after winning league MVP in his second season, like Jackson, in 2018 in his first full year as the starter, also like Jackson, and while his 2019 regular season wasn’t as exciting as the previous year, he different beast in the postseason, leading the Kansas City Chiefs to their first Superbowl title in half a century, winning MVP of the game in the process.

“I want that curse. I hope that’s a curse,” said Jackson dispelling the curse after watching Mahomes being on the cover last year and winning a championship the following season.

As an avid player of Madden, a huge fan of Jackson’s and a close follower of the Ravens as a team, I personally can’t wait to use my favorite player and team the first opportunity I get once the game is out. Even with their new features and amenities in the latest version of Madden, capturing all the attributes that make Jackson the one of a kind playmaker that he is impossible in both the virtual and physical world.