The Madden Curse Reality or Coincidence?
 

I know it's not real but i can't believe all the injuries over the years.. I think it is about time to put retired folks ont he Madden covers..lol

They should put Osama Bin Laden on the cover of Madden. Maybe the curse will work on him :evil:

For it to be "reality" it should have more then a 50% success rate. It doesn't. Culpepper, Vick, McNabb and now Alexander. Doesn't explain Eddie George or Ray Lewis.

Eddie George cost his team the playoffs with a terrible fumble recovered by Ray Lewis, and Ray Lewis broke his wrist, missed the playoffs and the Pro Bowl. But sure, those are just coincidences. :roll:

A lot of people don't include the early years:

Madden 1999 - Garrison Hearst twisted his ankle on very first play from scrimmage.

Madden 2000 - Barry Sanders flat out retires.

What are you talking about? A dropped pass by a RB, something every RB does, is a manifestation of the curse? Please. Ray Lewis didn't miss any significant time, his team missed the playoffs in '04, you have your years mixed up.

I never said he missed significant time. He broke his wrist. And no, he didn't make the playoffs or the Pro Bowl that year. For the best defensive player in the league, that's an off year.

So now the Madden Curse not only is injuries, but performance too? Too wide ranging there. **** happens in the NFL all the time. Players have bad seasons, get hurt, etcetera. It's mumbo jumbo.

Just like the game before the Super Bowl video game competition, where the winner of that game, his team went on the win the Super Bowl. Seven straight times, must be reality right? Then in '03, the Panthers player won the game, then they proceeded to lose the Super Bowl.

I quote The Notorious BIG: "Mo' money, Mo' problems". Makes me wanna cry. SA will be back though.

I don't think its real. Just think of all of the injuries that happen every year. Probably half of the league misses atleast 1 game with an injury.

Ray Lewis also didnt make an int that year, the only time in his career that happened. The Madden curse is for real, I avoided Alexander in all of my fantasy leagues because of it. I am a believer.

It is a real coincidence.

Injuries happen. I'm do not believe in curses at all, but the fact this happens very year is pretty alarming. That said this isn't like a Broken Leg or Sports Hernia, its a minor crack.

Also those teams of the madden cover victims do very poorly in that same season, which the Seahawks aren't.

it may not be as affective for Ray Lewis but he had a down season and there is no doubt about it. best advice is to never draft anyone on the cover of Madden.

Why can't they just put Madden back on it? Maybe he will fall and break his leg, thus resulting in no more Captain Obvious commenting.

They played Detroit, Arizona, and a NYG team that was coming off a huge win then hitting the road they were due for an L. Lets see how they play in Chicago.

Its not like our gameplan is gonna be changed that much. Shaun wasn't running very well to begin with, and our offense finally seems t be rolling.

I agree that the offense looks impressive, but now they will be facing a legit defense.

Living in Chicago they are legit, but i really, really think Deion Branch is gonna tear Tillman, who really isn't good IMO, apart.

He may or may not do that but I cant see the Seahawks winning that game.

I don't believe in the 'curse' (though it's fun to joke about), but your logic is off... unless you have decided that an arbitrary occurance rate of 50% is what determines "reality."

But 50% is a goofy choice. Crashes happen on much less than 1% of airplane flights, but they are real; at the same time, probably 90%+ of kids under age 5 in this country believe in Santa Claus, but he isn't real.

Now, if you're talking about the statistical validity of the 'curse,' then you'd have to figure out what the percentage of season-ruining injuries is among all NFL players, and compare that to the percentage of season-ruining injuries among Madden coverboys. And/or analyze years of crappy underperformance. The problem you'd have with such a statistical analysis is that your sample (of Madden coverboys) is way too small to have any statistical significance. But you can pull some numbers out of your ass, at least, and make an argument.

For example, if 50% of the Madden coverboys have had crappy years (due to injury or just not living up to expectations and/or past performance levels), but only 25% of NFL players have season-ruining injuries and/or just generally suck, then yeah, we can say that the Madden coverboys have problems. But, as all my stats professors love to say, correlation is not causation. That is, maybe they aren't having crappy years/injuries because they're on the cover, but the other way around. That is to say, their reason for being on the cover is that the prior year they didn't have an injury, or they had a break-out (abnormal) season, and then they return to their regular form the next year.

Or, maybe other players hit the coverboys a bit harder, and pay more attention to stopping them.

As someone with a medical background, it bugs me whenever I hear people make the fallacious distinction between a "fracture" and a "break," or a "crack" and a "break," because there is no difference between these injuries... a fracture is a crack is a break. This medical ignorance is almost as annoying as when people get relieved when x-rays come back "negative" and the stupid announcers say something banal (and just plain wrong) like "luckily, it's just a sprain".*

And unless it's a compound and/or open fracture, every single 'broken' bone in the NFL is merely a crack that may or may not transect the bone.

A "hairline" fracture implies one that does not transect the bone, and one in which there has been little or no displacement away from either side of the fracture. The implication of this implication is that the fracture requires less time to heal, as there is a smaller (if any) gap between the two sides of the fracture.


*Not to sidetrack my rant about fractures, but in many cases, sprains are worse than fractures. Sprains imply stretching, straining, tearing, and even rupturing of ligaments and tendons, with concomitant bruising of muscles, damage to cartilage, and even bone bruising. A simple fracture is often a far, far, far less serious injury than many sprains.

Well this isn't like a Vick injury. Its on a non-weight bearing bone. My point is that its not gonna sideline him for a significant amount of time like Vick and mcNabb

I don't buy into that voodoo BS....but i still hope the entire Chicago Bears Defense ends up on the cover next year :lol:

I'm not a math professor but just looking at it, even if you don't count George and Lewis, that's a 66.6% sucess rate.