American football
Arizona Cardinals
Main article: 1925 NFL Championship controversy
The Arizona Cardinals National Football League (NFL) franchise is allegedly suffering from a curse[1] placed on them by the citizens of Pottsville, Pennsylvania for undeservedly claiming the 1925 NFL Championship at the expense of the Pottsville Maroons, who were stripped of their title by the NFL in one of the greatest controversies in sports history.
This curse will supposedly only be lifted when the Championship is returned to Pottsville, and thus to the correct shade of red team. However, subsequent developments present two major obstacles to this:
Firstly, the Pottsville Maroons relocated to Boston in 1929 (as the Bulldogs), and the franchise folded at the end of the season.
Secondly, as of 2021, the Pottsville metropolitan area has 45% of the population of that of the NFL's smallest, Green Bay, meaning Pottsville is too small to have any realistic prospect of ever receiving another NFL team.
These obstacles make it impossible for the long-defunct Maroons or any Pottsville team to win another NFL Championship; thus, the curse can only be lifted by overturning the original 1925 ruling.
The Cardinals team holds the record for the longest championship drought, with their most recent championship coming in 1947 (when the team were based in Chicago), which is also the longest drought in American professional sports.
Further, the 1947 team was notable for having two of its members die during their playing careers within a year of each other (Jeff Burkett died in a plane crash following appendix surgery during the season, and Stan Mauldin died of a heart attack after a game the following season).
Arizona was also defeated in Super Bowl XLIII by another Pennsylvania team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose founder Art Rooney supported Pottsville's claim to the 1925 Championship, while his family and successors have continued to do so following Art's death in 1988.
The Cardinals franchise also leads the NFL in the total number of losses (both regular season and playoffs), with 785 as of 2021.[2]
Detroit Lions
In 1958, the Detroit Lions traded Bobby Layne to the Pittsburgh Steelers, with Layne responding to the trade by supposedly saying that the Lions would "not win for 50 years".[3] The veracity of this story has been disputed, particularly because the quote was never published at the time.[4]
Despite this, in the 50 years after the trade, the Lions accumulated the worst winning percentage of the 12 teams in the NFL at the time, and are still one of only two franchises that were in the NFL prior to 1966 that have not yet played in the Super Bowl.[5] The Lions' postseason record in this time is 1?12 in twelve appearances, the worst of any team, with their lone playoff win coming against the Dallas Cowboys following the 1991 season.
When the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fifth Super Bowl championship in 2006, they won it at Ford Field, the Lions' current home stadium. Two years later - in the last year of the supposed curse - the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl championship, while the Lions finished 0?16, the first team to lose every game of a 16-game season.
Philadelphia Eagles
Main article: The Lombardi Curse
This alleged curse supposedly prevented the Philadelphia Eagles franchise from winning the Super Bowl until Super Bowl LII.
The origin of this curse dates back to 1960, when the Eagles defeated the Vince Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers to win the NFL Championship, which would be the only playoff loss in Lombardi's coaching career.
Following Lombardi's death in 1970, the League named the Super Bowl trophy in honor of his memory and his legacy.
This renaming of the trophy, combined with the Eagles' failures to win another Championship after 1960, led some Eagles fans to believe the franchise was cursed by Vince Lombardi: that being the only team to beat Lombardi in a playoff game meant never winning the trophy named after him.
During that time, the Eagles accumulated playoff heartbreaks that included two Super Bowl losses (to the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots), and three consecutive NFC Championship Game losses from 2001 to 2003.
The curse was broken in 2017 when the Eagles defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl LII to win their first Championship in 57 years - by coincidence, the Eagles' Championship drought lasted the same length as Lombardi's life.
Madden NFL
Main article: Madden NFL ? Madden Curse
Ambox current red.svg
This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (February 2020)
Prior to 1999, every annual installment of the Madden NFL video game franchise primarily featured John Madden on its cover. In 1999, Electronic Arts selected San Francisco 49ers running back Garrison Hearst to appear on the PAL version's cover, and has since featured one of the league's top players on every annual installment despite Madden's opposition. While appearing on the cover has become an honor akin to appearing on the Wheaties box, much like the Sports Illustrated cover jinx, certain players who appeared on the Madden video game box art have experienced a decline in performance, usually due to an injury.[6]
When asked about the "Madden Curse", Chris Erb, then director of marketing for EA Sports, commented, "I don't know that we believe in the curse. The players don't believe in the curse."[citation needed]
After appearing on the cover of Madden NFL 20, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes suffered a dislocated patella on a week 7 game, which kept him out of games until week 10 of the 2019 NFL season. Nevertheless, after returning he led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl LIV win, which many considered to have broken the Madden curse.[7]
Super Bowl
Main article: Super Bowl curse
The Super Bowl curse or Super Bowl hangover is a phrase referring to one of three things that occur in the National Football League (NFL): Super Bowl participant clubs that follow up with lower-than-expected performance the following year; NFL teams that do not repeat as Super Bowl champions; and host teams of the Super Bowl that do not play the game on their own home fields.
The phrase has been used to explain both why losing teams may post below-average winning percentages in the following year and why Super Bowl champions seldom return to the title game the following year. The term has been used since at least 1992, when The Washington Post commented that "the Super Bowl Curse has thrown everything it's got at the Washington Redskins. The Jinx that has bedeviled defending champs for 15 years has never been in better form".[8] The phenomenon is attributed by football commentator and former NFL manager Charley Casserly to such elements as "a shorter offseason, contract issues, [and] more demand for your players' time".[9] Casserly also notes that "once the season starts, you become the biggest game on everybody's schedule."[9] Alleged curse notwithstanding, multiple teams have indeed repeated as Super Bowl champions, including the Green Bay Packers in the first two Super Bowls, the Pittsburgh Steelers twice in the 1970s, the Miami Dolphins also in the 1970s, the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s, the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s, and the New England Patriots in the 2000s (decade), and there are multiple cases of teams reaching the conference championship or further up to four times in a row, including the 1990s Cowboys and Buffalo Bills, the 2000s Philadelphia Eagles, and the late 2010s-early 2020s Kansas City Chiefs (the latter two coached by Andy Reid). The home stadium portion of the curse was lifted in 2021 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ironically beating the incumbent champion Chiefs in Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium, followed the next year by the Los Angeles Rams defeating the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.
Manningcast
In 2021, ESPN Inc. launched Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli, popularly nicknamed the Manningcast, a supplemental simulcast of Monday Night Football where brothers Peyton and Eli Manning banter with a guest. The guest was often an active NFL player who played the previous day. Of the eight players to appear on the telecast in its first season, all eight lost their next game.[10]
Kirk Cousins
The Kirk Cousins curse is the name of a curse given in which a team that lost to Cousins in the regular season has failed to win a Super Bowl. Teams such as the Chicago Bears (2020), Green Bay Packers (2016, 2020, 2021), New York Giants (2016), Los Angeles Rams (2017), Philadelphia Eagles (2018, 2019), and New Orleans Saints (2019) have lost to a team led by Cousins in the regular season and have failed to win a Super Bowl. The curse continued following the Packers divisional round playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers.[11]
Adding the 100% COVER CURSE of Playbook whoever IS on Cover even College teams NEVER EVER WINS a Championship the 2012 edition ELI MANNING on Cover and the 4 lil boxes college preview and NFC and AFC preview all 4 teams failed MICH U LSU Packers and ravens Giants also failed to get back to superbowl
and of course losing to BUCCANEERS (without benchjing) u aint winning no superbowls only 4 got there all lost ats and s/u and any teams that eat a bagel in season never won a superbowl EXCEPT Patriots but that was an emotional thing but they again squeak a 3 point win vs Panthers blowing bettors wallets apart as a 7.5 chalk :0008
Arizona Cardinals
Main article: 1925 NFL Championship controversy
The Arizona Cardinals National Football League (NFL) franchise is allegedly suffering from a curse[1] placed on them by the citizens of Pottsville, Pennsylvania for undeservedly claiming the 1925 NFL Championship at the expense of the Pottsville Maroons, who were stripped of their title by the NFL in one of the greatest controversies in sports history.
This curse will supposedly only be lifted when the Championship is returned to Pottsville, and thus to the correct shade of red team. However, subsequent developments present two major obstacles to this:
Firstly, the Pottsville Maroons relocated to Boston in 1929 (as the Bulldogs), and the franchise folded at the end of the season.
Secondly, as of 2021, the Pottsville metropolitan area has 45% of the population of that of the NFL's smallest, Green Bay, meaning Pottsville is too small to have any realistic prospect of ever receiving another NFL team.
These obstacles make it impossible for the long-defunct Maroons or any Pottsville team to win another NFL Championship; thus, the curse can only be lifted by overturning the original 1925 ruling.
The Cardinals team holds the record for the longest championship drought, with their most recent championship coming in 1947 (when the team were based in Chicago), which is also the longest drought in American professional sports.
Further, the 1947 team was notable for having two of its members die during their playing careers within a year of each other (Jeff Burkett died in a plane crash following appendix surgery during the season, and Stan Mauldin died of a heart attack after a game the following season).
Arizona was also defeated in Super Bowl XLIII by another Pennsylvania team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose founder Art Rooney supported Pottsville's claim to the 1925 Championship, while his family and successors have continued to do so following Art's death in 1988.
The Cardinals franchise also leads the NFL in the total number of losses (both regular season and playoffs), with 785 as of 2021.[2]
Detroit Lions
In 1958, the Detroit Lions traded Bobby Layne to the Pittsburgh Steelers, with Layne responding to the trade by supposedly saying that the Lions would "not win for 50 years".[3] The veracity of this story has been disputed, particularly because the quote was never published at the time.[4]
Despite this, in the 50 years after the trade, the Lions accumulated the worst winning percentage of the 12 teams in the NFL at the time, and are still one of only two franchises that were in the NFL prior to 1966 that have not yet played in the Super Bowl.[5] The Lions' postseason record in this time is 1?12 in twelve appearances, the worst of any team, with their lone playoff win coming against the Dallas Cowboys following the 1991 season.
When the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fifth Super Bowl championship in 2006, they won it at Ford Field, the Lions' current home stadium. Two years later - in the last year of the supposed curse - the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl championship, while the Lions finished 0?16, the first team to lose every game of a 16-game season.
Philadelphia Eagles
Main article: The Lombardi Curse
This alleged curse supposedly prevented the Philadelphia Eagles franchise from winning the Super Bowl until Super Bowl LII.
The origin of this curse dates back to 1960, when the Eagles defeated the Vince Lombardi-coached Green Bay Packers to win the NFL Championship, which would be the only playoff loss in Lombardi's coaching career.
Following Lombardi's death in 1970, the League named the Super Bowl trophy in honor of his memory and his legacy.
This renaming of the trophy, combined with the Eagles' failures to win another Championship after 1960, led some Eagles fans to believe the franchise was cursed by Vince Lombardi: that being the only team to beat Lombardi in a playoff game meant never winning the trophy named after him.
During that time, the Eagles accumulated playoff heartbreaks that included two Super Bowl losses (to the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots), and three consecutive NFC Championship Game losses from 2001 to 2003.
The curse was broken in 2017 when the Eagles defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl LII to win their first Championship in 57 years - by coincidence, the Eagles' Championship drought lasted the same length as Lombardi's life.
Madden NFL
Main article: Madden NFL ? Madden Curse
Ambox current red.svg
This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (February 2020)
Prior to 1999, every annual installment of the Madden NFL video game franchise primarily featured John Madden on its cover. In 1999, Electronic Arts selected San Francisco 49ers running back Garrison Hearst to appear on the PAL version's cover, and has since featured one of the league's top players on every annual installment despite Madden's opposition. While appearing on the cover has become an honor akin to appearing on the Wheaties box, much like the Sports Illustrated cover jinx, certain players who appeared on the Madden video game box art have experienced a decline in performance, usually due to an injury.[6]
When asked about the "Madden Curse", Chris Erb, then director of marketing for EA Sports, commented, "I don't know that we believe in the curse. The players don't believe in the curse."[citation needed]
After appearing on the cover of Madden NFL 20, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes suffered a dislocated patella on a week 7 game, which kept him out of games until week 10 of the 2019 NFL season. Nevertheless, after returning he led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl LIV win, which many considered to have broken the Madden curse.[7]
Super Bowl
Main article: Super Bowl curse
The Super Bowl curse or Super Bowl hangover is a phrase referring to one of three things that occur in the National Football League (NFL): Super Bowl participant clubs that follow up with lower-than-expected performance the following year; NFL teams that do not repeat as Super Bowl champions; and host teams of the Super Bowl that do not play the game on their own home fields.
The phrase has been used to explain both why losing teams may post below-average winning percentages in the following year and why Super Bowl champions seldom return to the title game the following year. The term has been used since at least 1992, when The Washington Post commented that "the Super Bowl Curse has thrown everything it's got at the Washington Redskins. The Jinx that has bedeviled defending champs for 15 years has never been in better form".[8] The phenomenon is attributed by football commentator and former NFL manager Charley Casserly to such elements as "a shorter offseason, contract issues, [and] more demand for your players' time".[9] Casserly also notes that "once the season starts, you become the biggest game on everybody's schedule."[9] Alleged curse notwithstanding, multiple teams have indeed repeated as Super Bowl champions, including the Green Bay Packers in the first two Super Bowls, the Pittsburgh Steelers twice in the 1970s, the Miami Dolphins also in the 1970s, the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s, the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s, and the New England Patriots in the 2000s (decade), and there are multiple cases of teams reaching the conference championship or further up to four times in a row, including the 1990s Cowboys and Buffalo Bills, the 2000s Philadelphia Eagles, and the late 2010s-early 2020s Kansas City Chiefs (the latter two coached by Andy Reid). The home stadium portion of the curse was lifted in 2021 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ironically beating the incumbent champion Chiefs in Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium, followed the next year by the Los Angeles Rams defeating the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.
Manningcast
In 2021, ESPN Inc. launched Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli, popularly nicknamed the Manningcast, a supplemental simulcast of Monday Night Football where brothers Peyton and Eli Manning banter with a guest. The guest was often an active NFL player who played the previous day. Of the eight players to appear on the telecast in its first season, all eight lost their next game.[10]
Kirk Cousins
The Kirk Cousins curse is the name of a curse given in which a team that lost to Cousins in the regular season has failed to win a Super Bowl. Teams such as the Chicago Bears (2020), Green Bay Packers (2016, 2020, 2021), New York Giants (2016), Los Angeles Rams (2017), Philadelphia Eagles (2018, 2019), and New Orleans Saints (2019) have lost to a team led by Cousins in the regular season and have failed to win a Super Bowl. The curse continued following the Packers divisional round playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers.[11]
Adding the 100% COVER CURSE of Playbook whoever IS on Cover even College teams NEVER EVER WINS a Championship the 2012 edition ELI MANNING on Cover and the 4 lil boxes college preview and NFC and AFC preview all 4 teams failed MICH U LSU Packers and ravens Giants also failed to get back to superbowl
and of course losing to BUCCANEERS (without benchjing) u aint winning no superbowls only 4 got there all lost ats and s/u and any teams that eat a bagel in season never won a superbowl EXCEPT Patriots but that was an emotional thing but they again squeak a 3 point win vs Panthers blowing bettors wallets apart as a 7.5 chalk :0008
