EA Sports announced the NFL player who will appear on the cover of its Madden 27 video game on Wednesday, June 3.
Cue the curse conversation for quarterback Caleb Williams, the first Chicago Bear featured on a Madden cover.
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Williams led the Bears to the playoffs for the first time since 2020, completing 58.1 percent of his passes for 3,942 yards, 27 touchdowns and seven interceptions.
Earning a Madden cover is a remarkable honor. But it comes with problematic history. It’s called the Madden curse.
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Players such as Christian McCaffrey (2025 cover), Rob Gronkowski (2017), Peyton Hills (2012), Troy Polamalu (2010), Brett Favre (2009), Vince Young (2008) and Michael Vick (2004) suffered serious injuries or severe statistical drop-offs.
CBS Sports looked at the seasons of cover athletes from 2001-24. It determined that 58 percent of NFL players took a downturn the season after a cover appearance.
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Still, there are no guarantees.
Here are four recent Madden cover stars who didn’t crumble, didn’t shrink and didn’t feed the myth. They showed the curse is more campfire story than football law, and that is exactly the lane Williams is walking into with his new cover.
Patrick Mahomes turned cover into title flex
Patrick Mahomes is your Madden 2020 cover athlete. For the sake of fantasy players everywhere, let's hope the Madden Curse is long over. pic.twitter.com/H3G49caZro
— Rotoworld Football (@rotoworld_fb) April 25, 2019
is the most obvious modern counterpunch to the Madden curse. He made his first solo cover appearance for the 2020 Madden game. Then, during the 2019 season, he kept piling up what every quarterback actually cares about: wins, yards and rings. The “extra attention” storyline never really applied, because he played deep into January and February instead of limping to the finish. The Kansas City Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in the Mahomes era, defeating the San Francisco 49ers 31-20.
His numbers fell a bit from the MVP season of 2018 that earned him the cover. Mahomes finished fourth in Offensive Player of the Year voting. That matters because the old curse narrative always leaned on sudden drop-offs in play or health. Mahomes gave sustained excellence, throwing for 4,031 yards, 26 touchdowns and just five interceptions. No cliff, no curse.
For Bears fans eyeing Williams’ cover, Mahomes is the template: if your talent is real and your situation is competent, the game on the box does not wreck your season, it just reflects how central you already are to the league.
Tom Brady showed the curse can’t touch a machine
The Madden curse was built on the idea that the cover comes right when a player peaks and then everything falls apart. shattered that timeline, both in 2018 when he appeared on the cover alone and 2022 when he shared it with Mahomes. We’ll look at his 2017 season, which came after he appeared on the Madden cover.
Brady passed for an NFL-high 4,577 yards, 32 touchdowns and eight interceptions during an NFL MVP campaign. The New England Patriots finished the regular season 13-3 and marched to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately for Brady, the Philadelphia Eagles claimed a 41-33 victory for the championship.
Brady remained productive, efficient and in the championship mix. The larger point for a fan base like Chicago’s is that Brady proved the cover is a snapshot, not a turning point.
Lamar Jackson runs over and around curse concerns
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson earned his 2021 Madden cover by rushing for 1,206 yards and leading his team to a 14-2 record. It was no surprise when Jackson won the first of his two NFL MVP awards.
So Jackson was primed for a fall in 2020 directly after appearing on the Madden cover. He may have taken a step back, but most QBs would love the season he turned in. Jackson rushed for 1,005 yards and passed for 2,757 yards and 26 TDs.
The Ravens made it back to the playoffs, although the fell in the divisional round for the second year in a row.
For Williams, Jackson showed that if your preparation and infrastructure are strong, a marketing moment doesn’t derail anything.
Josh Allen’s cover didn’t stop Bills
landed his 2024 cover before the 2023 season, and the curse chatter arrived on schedule. Instead of stepping back, he kept the Bills on the short list of AFC threats.
In the end, you could argue that Allen was cursed into committing additional turnovers in 2023. His 18 interceptions are a career high. But otherwise, his numbers and Buffalo’s success were right on par. Allen threw for 4,306 yards and 29 touchdowns, while rushing for 524 yards and 15 more scores.
The Bills finished 11-6 and won the AFC East before dropping a 27-24 heartbreaker to the Chiefs in the AFC divisional playoffs.
For Chicago, Allen’s path is a reminder that the bar for “curse” has quietly moved. The old narrative needed catastrophic failure. Allen’s body of work after the cover shows that sustained contention matters more than a few lowlights.