What is the Madden curse? Does it have anything to do with John Madden’s Thanksgiving special, Turducken? Let’s be honest: that is a Thanksgiving bird that is ripe for cross-contamination and is basically a side of salmonella next to your cranberry sauce and stuffing.
No, this particular NFL curse has to do with everyone’s favorite football video game. Or what was everyone’s favorite video game until about 2015? John Madden never should have had to see his game turn out like this in his final years. If an NFL player is going to be cursed, the game should at least be good.
The Lowdown on the Curse
As the lore goes, anyone who is featured on the front of the Madden video game will have unproductive or injury-prone seasons during and after the year they are on the cover.
The extent of the curse is subjective. Does it count as the curse striking if someone is on the cover and then gets injured five seasons down the road? As far as this author is concerned, yes. If you respect and honor the curse, it could just skip over you. If you don’t, check your hamstrings really closely.
Let’s get into the specifics.
Get ready for some mathing, folks. There are 25 total covers in Madden video game history. In 2023, the series namesake graced the cover himself. Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes appear on the cover individually and then together on another cover in the 2010s and 2020s. Meaning two people account for three covers. In 2009, we had two players on the cover. That leaves us with 25 potentially cursed individuals overall.
The season year is always one year ahead of the release date. For example, Josh Allen’s cover was released in 2023 but is for season 2024. Do we count the curse striking for Allen’s 2023 year when the game was released or the 2024-2025 season that the game represents? The amount of subjectivity surrounding the Madden curse is high. But the answer is yes. We count everything.
Madden Curse Victims
Out of 25, 19 are what we deemed ‘cursed’. That’s a 76% rate. If we count our ‘maybes’ that will be discussed under the “curse-free” individuals since they’re on the fence, the curse rate would be 84%. Either way, the curse is real. The math says so. By chance alone, 50% would be cursed. The number is quite a bit higher than by chance alone.
Let’s delve into the 19 curse casualties.
The 1990s: Garrison Hearst is known as the first casualty ever. He was on an international edition of the video game in 1999 for the 2000–2001 season. A broken ankle that made his talas bone die in his foot had Hearst sidelined for two seasons. Hearst never returned to his former level of talent before retiring in 2004 after he broke his hand.
The 2000s: No one is safe. Literally, no one. Buckle up, folks. It’s going to be a painful decade.
Barry Sanders was on the cover of the 2000 edition. Awkwardly, after he suddenly retired at the end of the 1999 season. Timing people, timing.
Eddie George was on what is referred to as Madden 1. 2001 was the beginning of Eddie George’s decline when his yards per carry were the fourth-lowest number in league history for running backs. From there, things got worse and worse, with many toe and ankle injuries that ended up getting him cut by the Titans after eight seasons. He is one of the few RBs who had over 10,000 yards while never missing a start. His decline was shocking.
Daunte Culpepper of 2002 was drafted 11th overall in the 1999 draft. He was named the starting QB for the Minnesota Vikings in 2000 and was a Pro Bowler that same year. In 2001, he slid so far downhill that he did an Eddie George with 14 TDs to 13 interceptions and a knee injury. The curse followed Culpepper through 2002, but he did recover in later years. It’s an unusual response to the curse, but we’ll take it.
Madden 3 had Marshall Faulk on the cover. His ankle injury sidelined Faulk a bit in 2003, and he never went above 1,000 yards after 2001. The curse cut that productivity.
Michael Vick is Michael Vick. And he was on the 2004 season cover. We’ll ignore the obvious and just point out his broken leg in 2003, which made him miss 11 games.
The face of Madden Five was Ray Lewis, who broke his wrist in 2004 and had a thigh injury in 2005 that sidelined him for 10 games.
Next year was Donovan McNabb, who had just won the Super Bowl in 2004. McNabb went on the cover for the 2006 edition, and the curse got him. In 2005, he injured his groin, which put him on IR for weeks 10 and after. Donovan was plagued by injuries, as if he were the Pharoah in Exodus from 2005 to 2007.
Shaun Alexander of Madden 07 had a similar experience to McNabb. A broken foot in week 3 of the 2006 season had him out for the majority of the season. In 2007, he had a broken wrist, a knee, and an ankle sprain. That was pretty much it for Alexander’s career after that. Heaven help us.
The following year, Vince Young was on the cover. Young had a quad injury in 2007 and a knee injury in 2008, along with some pretty significant off-field troubles that had him canned in 2010 after five seasons with the Tennessee Titans. After that, he played for a different team each season, in typical curse fashion.
Brett Favre was retired when he was on the cover for the 2010 season, released in 2009, and it should have stayed that way. 2009 went well, but 2010 had the curse written all over it. Favre had a shoulder sprain, but it was really the concussion he sustained in December of 2010 that got him. He was unable to pass the post-concussion tests in January 2011 and never played again.
Last but not least for the 2000s was Madden 10, which was released in 2009. There were two men on the cover: Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu. The curse got to the latter player. Polamalu had recurring knee injuries in 2009 and recurring ankle problems in 2010.
The 2010s: Besides the 2020s, the 2010s were the least cursed. But, as you’ll see, that doesn’t mean much.
Madden 12 victim Peyton Hillis had recurring hamstring problems in 2011. He also had strep throat. If you thought you’d heard his name recently, it’s because he nearly died rescuing his son and niece from drowning in the ocean in Florida in 2023, so there’s that.
Adrian Peterson was the face of the 2014 season. What a nightmare era for Peterson! One of his children was killed in 2013 after being assaulted by a live-in boyfriend of the child’s mother. In 2014, Peterson didn’t play for a lot of the season because of suspensions related to child abuse charges. Additionally, Adrian Peterson had a groin and foot injury in 2014 that required surgery in the off-season. Holy moly.
Richard Sherman was on the cover for the 2015 season. He had that Tommy John surgery at the end of the 2014 season. The injury didn’t slow him down that much, but it started a slow trajectory of Sherman’s mortality as he aged.
Odell Beckham Jr. was next up on the list for 2016. He had some hamstring issues in the 2016–2017 season, which is a clear sign of the curse. It was really the slow unraveling of his career due to his disagreeable nature and minor injuries like an ankle sprain in 2017 that has put Beckham on a wild team carousel and year out of the league in 2022. Sometimes it seems the curse attacks people’s characters too.
Gronk got beat up real good on his year on the cover. In 2016, he had the Madden Curse favorites of hamstring issues. Gronkowski also had a pulmonary contusion (a bruised lung) and a back injury that ended his already short season.
Last but surely not least was AB on the 2019 cover. We all know Antonio Brown’s situation. We’ll just point out that Brown’s last game for the Steelers was the 2019 season.
The 2020s: With Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady appearing so much in the 2020s, the level of cursage was low.
Lamar Jackson appeared on Madden 21. Jackson had COVID twice, once in 2020 and again in 2021. He had a devastating concussion at the end of his 2020 season, and an ankle injury sidelined Lamar Jackson’s 2021 season in Week 14.
Josh Allen is the face of Madden 24. It’s not clear what’s afflicting Allen, but something is haunting him, and the Madden curse is as good an explanation as any. We’re attributing his inability to get the Bills to the Super Bowl to this. Rise above, Allen, rise above!
The Curse-Free Fellas
We have a few subjective individuals we’re counting as ‘maybe.’
For example, the 2023 season cover had John Madden on it, which is particularly dark through the lens of this article considering he passed away in 2021 and was commemorated the following year. This is his second time on the cover and his first since 2000.
Drew Brees appears on Madden 11. Brees had an MCL sprain (or tear) in 2010 that he played through. He didn’t have a documented injury to that knee ever again, so we could overlook that injury. However, a little down the road in 2015, he had the shoulder rotator cuff bruise that followed him for the rest of his career and a torn plantar fascia in his right foot. A delayed curse? Maybe. You decide.
We have four hard no’s.
Larry Fitzgerald on Madden 10 and Calvin Johnson on 13 completely eluded the curse as if it didn’t exist. If anything, they did better. Ask them how they did that; they might just have access to something else, like the Fountain of Youth.
Tom Brady is a legend and football god who Benjamin Buttoned his way through the NFL, so he basically defied everything, including any curses. Any minor declines or injuries attributed to the cover are a moot point, all things considered.
Patrick Mahomes defies all adversity, including a curse. That’s not a challenge to the curse; it’s just a fact.
Speaking of curses… Is the Harry Kane curse real? Find out here.
About the Author
The author, Julie Miller, has two degrees that barely have anything to do with sports. They do offer insight on the health, body, and mind of athletes, as well as a background in statistics. Injury reports are a delight! Keep an eye on Julie, because her interests vary far and wide within the realm of sports, with an eye for the abstract.
You can find Julie Miller on X and Instagram at @itsmillercrime. She also has two weekly podcast shows, one on True Crime within the world of sports and another on general sports updates, that can both be found here.
