Madden 2010: Will the Curse Continue?

21 years and counting. Every year it turns average guys and girls into living room head coaches and general managers and in just over a month, we’ll all be lined up to get our copy. August 14 if you want to be exact. And the question this year will be the same its been for the last 10 years: will this year’s cover boy or boys finally break the curse?

Look, I have my quirks but I don’t consider myself a very superstitious person. But anyone who doesn’t think there’s something to this “Cover Curse” is kidding their self.

Lets take a look back, the victims, er, cover boys, their injuries and subsequent decline.


Madden 1999: Garrison Hearst. This was the first year someone other than Madden was featured on the cover.  Hearst had a terrific season that year. Look at the line: 2105yds from scrimmage, nine touchdowns.  Second round of the playoffs against Atlanta, first quarter, one carry for seven yards and one broken ankle. Hearst would be sidelined for two full seasons from that injury.


Madden 2000: Barry Sanders silhouetted just over Madden’s shoulder. 1,500 yards away from breaking Walter Payton's (then) all-time rushing record; Sanders suddenly retires just seven days before training camp. Maybe Barry knew something was up.


Madden 2001:  Eddie George. George would have his best year as a pro the year he was featured on the game’s cover.

Averaging about 1,400 yards and eight touchdowns a season up until that point, George would break the thousand yard mark just two more times, barely, running for 1,165 yards in 2002 and 1,031 yards in 2003.

He would go on to play just four more seasons after being featured on the game, never seeing the same success. George was out of the league at 31.


Madden 2002:  The Vikings Daunte’ Culpepper was the first ever quarterback on the cover. Culpepper’s likeness on “Madden 02” followed a season where he threw 33 touchdown passes and had a 98.0 quarterback rating.

The Madden year, Culpepper missed five games, threw for 1,300 fewer yards and finished with a pedestrian 14 touchdowns and 11 picks.

He’d go on to have two Pro Bowl seasons a few years later, but his career has since went down in flames. I’d like to think this might have had just as much to do with Randy Moss bolting for Oakland as it did the jinx…but that’s a whole other column.


Madden 2003: Back to the running backs. Marshall Faulk was hands down the best running back in the NFL at the time and possibly the league’s best player. Top three at the very least.

Faulk would make the Pro Bowl on reputation only that season,  starting only 10 games, rushing for 953 yards and  8 touchdowns. That was the start of a rapid decline and Faulk would be out of football in just three seasons later.


Madden 2004: Michael Vick. The most physically gifted player in NFL. In just two years in the league, Vick would become the face of the NFL and the highest paid player in league history.

His Madden cover season ended before it began, as he got knocked out two thirds of the season after getting his leg broken in a meaningless preseason game. I don’t need to get too much into the rest of Vick’s career. Let’s just move on.

Madden 2005: Ray Lewis, the first defensive player to ever be on the cover of the game. Like Hearst and George, Lewis somehow managed to foil the bad mojo during his season on the cover. Granted, he did miss one game due to injury and his numbers were down slightly, but Lewis still managed to make the Pro Bowl.

But like George and Hearst (got hurt in the playoffs), Lewis would have his most trouble the following season, playing only five games after eventually being sidelined by a hamstring injury. But, he seems to not have been too affected by the jinx making three Pro Bowls since coming back from injury.


Madden 2006: Donovan McNabb.  Before his season on the cover, McNabb went to five straight Pro Bowls. But the 2005 season would be one for McNabb to forget after playing only nine games before missing the rest of the season due to hernia surgery. He hasn’t been to one Pro Bowl since.


Madden 2007: Shaun Alexander. Fresh off of his 1,880 yard, 27 touchdown campaign that saw his Seahawks in the Super Bowl, Alexander’s cover season would be shortened by a broken foot. He would never gain 1,000 yards in a season again and at 31 years old, found him self backing up Clinton Portis and Ladell Betts on the Redskins.


Madden 2008: Vince Young. This was a particularly strange case as far as the jinx goes. It saw an entire region come together to form and support, www.SaveLTFromMadden.com and Young endure one of the weirdest seasons I can remember from a player who enjoyed so much success the season before.

Lets be honest, Young wasn’t exactly lighting it up from the pocket, but he won games.  And while trying to pick up a first down against Tampa, Young ran out of bounds, into a speaker and pulled a hamstring.

He would hampered by the injury throughout the season and clearly wasn’t the player he was the year before. He would finish with just nine touchdowns and 17 interceptions.

The next season, Young was booed at home, contemplated retirement and had the entire Titans organization looking for him after they thought he’d become suicidal. As it turned out, Young was enjoying chicken wings while watching MNF and had no idea he was feeling so down. T

his was followed up by a statement, from his mother, through the media and his eventual benching in favor of Kerry Collins.

Tomlinson claims he and EA couldn’t come to an agreement on a contract dollar figure for the for the 2008 cover. I’d like to think that that was his way of saying, “Thanks but no thanks, I’m enjoying all of my success and all of my tendons working properly.”


Madden 2009: Brett Farve. Almost, but not quite as cooky as Young's ordeal, as crazy as that sounds. It started in March that same year when Farve announced his retirement.

EA decided to put Favre on the cover anyway making him only the second retired player since Barry Sanders to be on the cover of the game. Favre would have a change of heart and we’d go through that entire fiasco with Favre and the Packers before he was eventually traded to the Jets. 

So, now we have Madden '09, with Brett Favre on the cover, wearing a Green Bay Packers uniform, only he plays for the New York Jets.

After setting an NFL record for most consecutive games started at quarterback, Favre would go on to sustain the first major injury of his career, tearing his biceps late in the season.


Madden 2010:  Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald. This will be the first time in the game’s 20-plus-year history that two players will be on the game’s cover. Both players have enjoyed stellar careers thus far with Polamalu helping the Pittsburgh to two Super Bowl titles in four seasons while Fitzgerald has blossomed into arguably the league’s best receiver.

Their teams meeting in last year’s championship game, two players on opposite sides of the ball hoping to not only get back to the promised land this season but bring a championship to their respective cities. But in order to bring those Lombardi trophies home, both players will have to find a way to stay the field.

It’s an unofficial league-wide honor that in the words of Jay-Z can be a “Gift and a Curse.” Only time will tell.