The Madden video game started featuring players on the cover of US versions with Madden 2001. Since that time, some feel a trend has developed in which bad things happen to the players whose images appear on the game’s cover. The Madden curse theory is now so ingrained in the landscape of NFL fandom that 66% of Lions fans in a recent poll said they don’t want to see Calvin Johnson on the cover of Madden 13.

Is the Madden curse really something to be concerned with? As it turns out, not surprisingly, no.

At this point you have two choices as a Lions fan. One, just go vote for Calvin Johnson over Arian Foster to move on in the cover tournament. Two, read through whatever portion of the next 2,000 words you need to come to your senses and conquer your irrational fears of the Madden curse and then go vote for Calvin Johnson.

Here’s the real story behind all 12 Madden covers. (more…)

Kyle Terada-US PRESSWIRE

Throwing for 5,000 yards in the NFL right now is nothing. I don’t want to take anything away from it. As much as people throw the football now, you better have 5,000 (yards) if you have Calvin Johnson.

Faulk uses two sentences to say diminish the accomplishments of Matthew Stafford and one to say he doesn’t “want to take anything away from it”. Right.

I won’t dignify the remarks by refuting them directly but the statement does bring out an underlying issue and that is that Stafford is somehow artificially propped up by the presence of Calvin Johnson.

Take away every single one of CJ’s receiving yards from Stafford’s total and what do you get? 3,357 yards; that would rank 16th in the NFL last year. The ranking would be the same when taking away Jerry Rice’s all-time single season record of 1,848 yards. Take away Calvin’s 16 touchdowns and Stafford’s other 25 would have ranked ninth in the NFL last year. That leaves and awful lot of production that came from players other than Calvin Johnson.

Let’s also not forget that Calvin Johnson’s statistical explosion this year coincided with a full 16-game season from Matthew Stafford. If “you better have 5,000 yards if you have Calvin Johnson”, as Faulk suggests, why are we just now seeing this kind of production from Megatron? The question is rhetorical rather than critical of Johnson. The two are both special players that work well together, not one special player that carries the other. Who knows, in a few years we might hear a new crop of analysts say, “you better have 1,600 receiving yards and 16 touchdowns if you have Matthew Stafford”.

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