Drew Brees and the Madden NFL Curse: Can He Continue To Avoid It?

The Madden Curse has taken its toll on many players in the past decade, but so far this year, 2011 cover boy Drew Brees has been able to avoid any kind of season-ending injury, disruptive feud or embarrassing event...for now.

In the past, only two players have legitimately avoided the Madden Curse: Larry Fitzgerald had a stellar season a year ago (he shared the cover with Troy Polamalu, who only played in five games), and Vince Young started in 15 games in 2008 and led the Titans to their first playoff appearance in four years.

Victims of the curse include Polamalu, Brett Favre, Shaun Alexander, Donovan McNabb, Ray Lewis, Michael Vick, Marshall Faulk, Daunte Culpepper, Eddie George, Barry Sanders, Dorsey Levens and Garrison Hearst.

These brave young men have gone up year after year, determined to put an end to the most famous curse in sports since the Curse of the Bambino and the Billy Goat Curse. But they have all done it to no avail.

These men have all gone down to an injury, spent a season in a distracting feud or experienced a serious decline in production, leading to a diminished role with their teams.

Brees has gone about facing the curse in the right way. He isn't taunting the curse, but he isn't ignoring it either.

When he graced the cover of Madden 2006, Donovan McNabb belittled the curse, claiming that he "wasn't worried about it" and that he "doesn't believe in the curse at all."

What did the curse do to him? It gave him a whiny Terrell Owens and a sports hernia, and the Eagles finished a lousy 6-10.

The Madden Curse can be a mysterious thing. It can strike at any time, really, evidenced by the two extremes of Michael Vick and Eddie George.

In Vick's cursed season, 2003, he appeared on the cover of Madden '04. A week after it came out, he promptly broke his leg, sidelining the league's most exciting star for the majority of the season.

George, however, had a much more excruciating curse. George had a costly fumble in the playoffs against the Ravens and followed it with a steep decline in production the following years, cutting down one of the league's best running backs in his prime.

Brees said, after learning that he would be on the cover of Madden '11, "It is what it is, but I look at it as a challenge."

He showed respect toward the curse, but at the same time he isn't quivering in his cleats about it getting him.

So watch your back, Brees. Keep an eye out for sticks that could trip you and break you leg, stay away from those big linemen that could fall on you and tear something, and stay away from controversial players who like to feud—but above all, just hope and pray.

If there is one man who could positively, without question break the Madden Curse once and for all, it is the man who brought New Orleans a championship and put the swagger back in Who Dat.