There was a parade by means of Chicago when the Cubs lastly kicked their Billy Goat Curse. All of Purple Sox nation celebrated when Boston reversed the Curse of the Bambino.
Is it attainable the Madden Curse — not practically as previous as its baseball counterparts however maybe extra entrenched in popular culture — additionally has ended, and we by no means even realized it?
Or is extra heartbreak lurking, simply one other dangerous break and a season or two away?
The Madden NFL online game franchise is likely one of the most profitable on this planet. Redwood Metropolis-based EA Sports activities has bought round 150 million copies of a sport credited with educating legions of followers – and plenty of present NFL gamers and coaches – the nuances of soccer due to its sensible type of play.
Simply as notable has been the decades-long enigma often known as the Madden Curse.
Not acquainted? Merely put, it’s the reason usually recommended for the horrible accidents or abrupt declines in efficiency which have adopted an inordinate variety of gamers who've graced the duvet of the Madden NFL sport over the previous 25 years.
The cases have develop into much less frequent in recent times, largely as a result of Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, the duvet gamers for 3 of the previous 5 editions, look like curse resistant. And there can be no curse this season: John Madden, the previous Raiders head coach, legendary broadcaster and driving drive for the online game, is again on the duvet for the primary time since 1998, a tribute after his loss of life in December on the age of 85.
However traditionally, bother has quickly adopted for the Madden cowl boys.
Debates rage about which gamers even have been cursed, however an argument might be made that 16 of the 24 gamers who've been featured on the duvet bought damage, noticed their efficiency drop off dramatically or suffered some form of large in-season or playoff letdown that season. That doesn’t even account for Barry Sanders, who made the duvet in 1999 and shortly earlier than that season even started, surprised the NFL by retiring whereas nonetheless in his prime and by no means performed once more.
Technically, the Madden Curse isn’t a curse within the fairytale — or horror film — sense. However lots of followers imagine one thing is, or was, happening. When sport producers opened up the duvet slot to a fan vote, followers didn’t vote for their very own group’s stars, they voted for his or her rivals, hoping for a foe’s downfall by the curse.
Gamers have publicly placed on a courageous face, with blended outcomes.
Brady tempted destiny when he was named the duvet participant for Madden 18, filming a tongue-in-cheek business the place he walked beneath a ladder and broke a mirror. Brady not solely prevented harm, however was the league MVP that cowl season. His Patriots, nevertheless, had been upset by the Eagles within the 2018 Tremendous Bowl.
Former Seahawks working again Shaun Alexander, requested concerning the Madden Curse when he was picked for the entrance of the ’07 sport, replied, “Do you wish to be damage and on the duvet or simply damage?” Alexander broke his foot weeks after his cowl debuted and was out of the league two years later at age 31.
Publicly, just one participant has declined a canopy alternative – then-Chargers working again LaDainian Tomlinson for the ’08 cowl, however reportedly, that was over how a lot he’d be paid.
However gamers speak. And so they’ve seen what has occurred to so lots of their colleagues.
Peyton Manning, one of many NFL’s best quarterbacks, who retired in 2016 after profitable Tremendous Bowl 50, devoted an episode of his ESPN+ sequence “Peyton’s Locations” to the Madden Curse.
Manning considerably surprisingly by no means made a Madden NFL cowl and conceded, “I’m just a little damage that I used to be by no means requested.”
However would he have agreed?
“The reply is completely not,” Manning continued. “No. Freaking. Likelihood.”
With that, Manning and Garrison Hearst, the episode visitor who posed the query, burst out laughing on the set.
Hearst, the previous 49ers star working again, is aware of just a little concerning the matter. To many, he was affected person zero of the Madden Curse.
Throughout the 1998 season, Hearst turned the primary participant ever featured on a Madden NFL cowl, however broke his ankle shortly after the sport was launched and missed the subsequent two seasons.
Hearst developed avascular necrosis, the identical situation that ended the profession of Bo Jackson, who was the largest title in skilled sports activities — and just about unstoppable because the star of a rival soccer online game — when he bought damage. However as Manning famous to Hearst, there’s no such factor as a Tecmo Bowl Curse.
Solely Madden.
It wasn’t till a number of years following Hearst’s harm – after cowl stars Eddie George, Daunte Culpepper, Marshall Faulk and Michael Vick had been struck down in succession within the early 2000s – that the legend of the Madden Curse started to essentially take maintain. The idea didn’t actually have a title till Alyssa Roenigk coined the phrase in a 2002 ESPN The Journal article.
By 2012, after Donovan McNabb, Alexander, Vince Younger, Troy Polamalu and even Brett Favre and Drew Brees (to some extent) additionally suffered misfortunes after making the duvet, the Madden Curse was a part of NFL lore.
So, does Hearst imagine in a Madden Curse?
“I don’t wish to, as a result of which means I’m the primary one to begin it,” Hearst advised Manning. “However one thing’s happening. Look the place I'm, on ESPN+ (speaking about it).”
After all, not everybody buys into the curse speak, together with the man whose title has been on the field of each Madden NFL sport ever bought and whose likeness was splashed throughout the primary eight editions of the sport.
“I used to be on the duvet for a number of years, and I by no means as soon as even pulled a hamstring,” Madden as soon as stated. “It’s a violent sport. Accidents are going to occur.”
EA Sports activities’ public stance was if the gamers didn’t assume there was a curse, neither did they. However in 2010, the corporate reportedly started growing a comedy movie based mostly round a former star participant who abruptly comes out of retirement on the identical time he's on the duvet of a preferred online game and has to endure a sequence of setbacks – not not like how Favre’s 2008 season unfolded.
In 2007, because the Madden Curse was actually choosing up steam, former EA Sports activities advertising director Christopher Erb conceded to Time Journal, “I haven’t advised this to folks, however I’ve bought a bottle of Champagne in my workplace that we’re able to pop as soon as somebody breaks the curse.”
That bottle remained on ice for a couple of extra years till former Lions huge receiver Calvin Johnson began to reverse the curse in 2012, when, because the Madden NFL cowl participant, he had a profession 12 months, catching 122 passes for practically 2,000 yards.
Brady and Mahomes have additionally helped tamp down curse speak in recent times. Maybe not surprisingly, the pair of star quarterbacks are the one gamers to look twice on the Madden NFL cowl, together with collectively on final 12 months’s version.
Mahomes gave many individuals motive to imagine the curse was lastly over after the 2019 season, when the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs quarterback not solely turned the primary energetic Madden cowl participant to play in and win the Tremendous Bowl, however he was the MVP in beating the 49ers.
“What Curse?” EA Sports activities triumphantly tweeted shortly after the sport.
Solely time will inform if the Madden NFL curse has actually been reversed.