Madden NFL 16 Cover Athlete Vote Begins

Gridiron greatness is going to be achieved as EA Sports has narrowed Madden NFL 16's cover athlete down to a choice between Beckham, Brown, Gronk or Peterson.

EA Sports has announced that voting has begun to determine one of the highest honors off of the field that an NFL superstar can win. As the dust is still settling from that controversial play that cost the Seattle Seahawks a Super Bowl XLIX win against New England Patriots, EA Sports is finally moving on to the future of football. We have learned who are the league's four finalists to become Madden NFL 16's cover athlete.

Without further ado, the final four athletes are:

• New York Giants Wide Receiver Odell Beckham Jr.
• Pittsburgh Steels Wide Receiver Antonio Brown
• Arizona Cardinals Cornerback Patrick Peterson
• New England Patriots Tight End Rob Gronkowski

Voting will take place among two different rounds. The first round will narrow the choices down to two players and then the second round will obviously choose a winner. We should note that EA has been scaling down on the number of choices each year, with the 2013 vote featuring choices of 64 different players (both current and retired), and we had 16 choices in 2014. Now, we're down to four. We can't wait until next year when they just tell us who they decided to pick for the cover. Voting will happen on the Madden NFL Mobile app, which offers you a chance for multiple votes. Starting on May 13, the two highest vote-getters will face each other in the finals to determine Madden NFL 16's cover athlete that night.

Madden NFL 16 will hit the field on Aug. 25 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.