John Madden Has Passed At 85

John Mad­den, the NFL leg­end who is in the Hall of Fame and is the name­sake for EA’s Mad­den NFL series, has passed away at age 85.

Mad­den died Tues­day morn­ing, as con­firmed by the NFL, and report­ed by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. Mad­den coached the Oak­land Raiders back in the day, brin­ing them to a Super Bowl vic­to­ry in 1976.

He retired from coach­ing with the sec­ond-high­est win­ning per­cent­age of any coach (right below Vince Lom­bar­di), mov­ing on to become an NFL ana­lyst that led to sev­er­al Emmy award wins.

As of 2016, Mad­den was still help­ing EA with the video game franchise.

In a state­ment giv­en by NFL com­mis­sion­er Roger Good­ell, he said, “Nobody loved foot­ball more than Coach. He was foot­ball… there will nev­er be anoth­er John Mad­den, and we will be for­ev­er indebt­ed to him for all he did to make foot­ball and the NFL what it is today.”

EA Sports gave it’s own state­ment, say­ing, “John Mad­den was syn­ony­mous with foot­ball for more than 50 years. His knowl­edge of the game was sec­ond only to his love for it, and his appre­ci­a­tion for every­one that ever stepped on the grid­iron. A hum­ble cham­pi­on, a will­ing teacher, and for­ev­er a coach.”

“Our hearts and sym­pa­thies go out to John’s fam­i­ly, friends, and mil­lions of fans. He will be great­ly missed, always remem­bered, and nev­er forgotten.”