Peter Schrager’s bid for Dolphins ‘Madden 22’ cover falls short

Peter Schrager’s bid for Dolphins ‘Madden 22’ cover falls short

The latest cover athletes for EA Sports’ Madden 22 are a pair of familiar faces for any football fan. Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes will grace the cover of this year’s game — two “GOATs” (greatest of all-time) at the quarterback position. But before this week’s reveal of Brady and Mahomes, the gaming company teased the cover with an image of two literal goats, kicking off plenty of speculation as to who would actually be gracing the cover. And while Brady and Mahomes are a fine choice, we personally would have loved to see Peter Schrager’s suggestion come to be reality instead.

His choice.

Dolphins linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel.

This, of course, is a continuation of the romance between NFL Network’s ‘Good Morning Football’ and Van Ginkel going back to this past season. After Van Ginkel’s bright flashes of play midway through the season, he was declared the show’s “MVP, hero and Good Morning Football legend.”

As fun as it would actually be for Van Ginkel, of all members of the Dolphins, to actually grace the cover of Madden, that suggestion would be the greatest upset of all-time. There has not been a single Dolphins player to be featured on the cover of the game, which first debuted in 1988. The best chance Miami would have had along the way? Dan Marino, of course. But his career ran parallel to when Madden himself was featured on the cover. 2001 was the first year that the former coach was not on the cover himself and that honor went to Titans running back Eddie George.

Perhaps Dolphins running back Ricky Williams would have been a good choice in the mid-2000s, but Williams retired in the middle of his physical prime before making a comeback and other league stars were chosen over him during his first two years with Miami.

Van Ginkel on the cover? That’d be cool. But at this point we’d simply settle for a Dolphin. Any Dolphin.