The Madden Cover Athlete's Curse

Madden is one of the most look-forward-to releases on xbox and PS3 every year, and this year is no exception. For more than 20 years, this franchise has been an undeniably big hit. Every year, the EA Sports team visits the NFL draft in order to get head-shots of the new players in their new uniforms as soon as possible. Television programs pitting some of the most talented Madden NFL players in tournaments are shown around the world. And people are known to come up with every excuse in the book in order to get out of work on the very day the game releases - making it as close to a national holiday as the video game industry is likely to get.

 

You might also think that players are honored and delighted to be featured on the game's cover. For the 12 years Madden has been boasing an annual cover athlete, those athletes chosen seem to either play poorly that year, or suffer serious and season-ruining injury.

 

The Madden curse made it's mark again in 2009. For the first time in the series' history, two players graced the cover of Madden NFL 10. It's a classic matchup that re-lives the drama of Super Bowl 43; Larry Fitzgerald of the Cardinals and Troy Polomalu of the championship Steelers. In the Steelers' first regular season game, and Troy Polomalu's first after being put on the cover of Madden 10, he injured his ankle while blocking a field goal. He didn't return.

 

One would think that everyone in the league would have learned to avoid Madden by now. Players a) don't need the money and b) are quite superstitious in the best of times, so you'd think they'd just decline the offer from EA sports. As history has shown, going on the Madden NFL cover is almost guaranteed to affect a player, and probably his team, negatively.

 

Notable instances of the Madden NFL curse:

 

2002: Daunte Culpepper, QB, followed up his 2000 NFC championship appearance by leading his team to a 5-11 season, and missed the final 5 games of the season with an injured knee following his fateful appearance on the cover of Madden 2002: he hsan't recovered yet.

 

2003: Marking the beginning of the end of the "Greatest Show On Turf", Marshall Faulk of the Rams failed to rush for 1,000 yards in the 2001 season (for the first time since 1996) following his appearance on the cover of Madden 03 and his subsequent nagging ankle injury.

 

2004: The Madden Curse struck for the third year in a row in 2003, when star QB Michael Vick missed the entire season due to a fractured fibula he got in a preseason game.

 

2006: Donovan McNabb was featured on the cover of Madden 06, and in week one of the 2005 season, you guessed it, Donovan McNabb suffered a hernia. It plagued ihim all season, and he eventually missed the last 7 games of the season.

 

That evidence is hard to refute. So, how will Drew Brees fare against the msyterious and enignmatic "Madden Curse?"