The Cover of Madden NFL 25 Will Feature 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey

What an honor.

Grant Cohn | Jun 30, 2024

Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (23) scores a touchdown in the first half of Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports / Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

What an honor.

49ers running back Christian McCaffrey has been named the cover athlete for Madden NFL 25. He's the first 49ers player who's ever been on the cover and he's the third running back along with Adrian Peterson and Barry Sanders to be featured on the front of the game.

McCaffrey is coming off an incredible season in which he was named the Offensive Player of the Year and finished third in the MVP voting behind Lamar Jackson and Dak Prescott. He is universally regarded as the best running back in the NFL because he's such a weapon both as a ball carrier and a receiver. In the playoffs, he led the 49ers in both carries and catches. Despite all the weapons the 49ers have, their entire offense goes through McCaffrey.

Still, I think Madden picked the wrong 49ers player for their cover.

Brock Purdy should be the cover athlete. He would sell more games than McCaffrey. And Purdy is just as deserving if not more. Purdy finished fourth in the MVP voting and was the highest-rated quarterback in the NFL. And when the 49ers reached the Super Bowl and lost once again, Purdy was much better than McCaffrey.

The 49ers gave McCaffrey every opportunity to win the Super Bowl for them -- he touched the ball a whopping 30 times. And he averaged just 3.5 yards per carry, fumbled once and scored one touchdown. He couldn't carry the 49ers past the finish line. As opposed to Terrell Davis, who carried Mike Shanahan, John Elway, Ed McCaffrey and the rest of the Broncos to a Super Bowl championship in 1998 when he rushed for 5.2 yards per carry and 3 touchdowns against the Packers.

Davis is a Hall of Fame running back. McCaffrey is not. He's a very good running back who missed his opportunity to be an all-time great.

Published Jun 11, 2024|Modified Jun 30, 2024

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.