It might all be a coincidence. After all, curses can't be real, right? It's merely coincidence or odd confluence of events in a league and sport in which injuries are all too common. There's no way the Madden Curse -- when a player appears on the cover of Madden, and then either he ends up injured or his production falls away the following season -- is anything other than happenstance.
And yet ... for every Calvin Johnson, who set an NFL record with 1,964 receiving yards in his cover season of 2012, there is a Michael Vick, Peyton Hillis or Troy Polamalu.