Sports lends itself, for whatever reason, to superstitions. Streaks. Curses. Jinxes. Hexes. Witchcraft. There are athletes who use routine and others who take things to an extreme, almost OCD-like level to ensure they’ll perform at their best consistently.
And then sometimes you just see a team so inept, snake bitten, and pathetic, you have to imagine that something supernatural is to blame for all of the losing. Or the stadium, or the owner, or some strange circumstance is the only logical explanation for such misery.
For decades, these curses have been the primary go-to excuse for fans (myself included) because the only other thing to do is force the horrible ownership to sell. We can’t really do that, so ranking NFL curses is the next best thing for an already outrageously ridiculous and preposterous 2025-2026 NFL season.
14. The Superdome Curse
Is the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana haunted? Formerly known as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, this famous stadium has been known to Americans for more than just sports. But we are not here to litigate the early 2000s in terms of history — FEMA preparedness or anything else.
Just to point out some evidence to possibly prove that the home field of the New Orleans Saints is, in fact, cursed.
Exhibit A: The Saints hired a Voodoo priestess to bless the squad in the year 2000 after not winning a single playoff game in their 33-year history, to that point. Winless at the Superdome until Ava Kay Jones performed with a snake and some Voodoo dolls. They would go onto win plenty more playoff games including a Super Bowl — the franchise’s first and only.
Exhibit B: During Super Bowl 47, the electricity went out, causing a blackout that lasted for 34 minutes. The losing quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers? None other than Colin Kaepernick, who would be famously blackballed from the NFL for being an advocate for human and civil rights. Coincidence?
Exhibit C: In order to give the city of New Orleans an NFL team, workers were sent to dig up and excavate the grounds formerly occupied by the Old Girod Street Cemetery. That’s where the police discovered the skeletal remains that were linked to unsolved murders. Bad omen?
13. The Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy Curse
There are countless mini-curses that Minnesota Vikings fans believe, and added up they make a worthy entry on my list. But I think that all of the mishaps and foibles Minnesota has suffered over the decades can be summed up by simply saying: The Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy has haunted this team since 1969.
The winner of the NFL (before the AFL merger) won this award, and then the NFL decided to have its best team play in a “Super Bowl” of sorts against the best AFL team. In the fourth Super Bowl, the Vikings lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, and the two leagues merged. So not only did that trophy mean nothing anymore, the damn thing is lost! The team doesn’t even have it!
Then the Vikings lose a few more Super Bowls. Then a kicker named Gary Anderson, who never missed anything, in 1998 blows the NFC Championship game. Then Brett Favre threw an interception to blow another NFC Championship game to the aforementioned Saints, and haven’t come close since.
Cursed franchise.
12. The Sports Illustrated Cover
I won’t… cover… the number of times people have blamed bad luck and misfortune on this magazine. There are WAY too many examples to point to, but so many people believe the magazine has an effect on the outcome of games that SI itself addressed it with a cover in 2002. It had a black cat on the cover.
But out of the dozens and dozens of horrible things to happen after an athlete appeared on the front cover of SI, there are only three notable examples disproving this curse: Vince Young won a National Championship with Texas (but he sucked in the NFL). Emmitt Smith won a lot with the Cowboys, he’s immune to curses and remains the all-time leading rusher. And the Houston Astros were put on a pedestal early in 2014, predicting a World Series win, only to go onto win it all in 2017. Except that it was revealed later they were cheating, and were caught red-handed.
11. The Super Bowl Hangover Curse
It is said, and documented, that the loser of the Big Game has a downright putrid and disappointing follow-up run the next year. The runner-up jinx can be caused by a shorter off-season for the loser, contract disputes with disgruntled players, increased pressure from the media and fans (and the locker room), and increased speculation on how to comeback from a devastating loss.
Only the 1972 Miami Dolphins lost and then won the following year. The other team to do it is disqualified because they cheated. Lots of teams made the playoffs the following year after a SB loss, but the ones who missed the postseason entirely are quite the spectacle to behold. The most recent example is the San Francisco 49ers who won only six games the season following their Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2019 and 2023.
10. Buffalo’s William McKinnley Curse
The Buffalo Bills are the most successful team to never win a Super Bowl, and some may view them (and the god awful Sabres) as being forever cursed. The scapegoat explanation?
Former U.S. President William F. McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901 in Buffalo, New York.
There is more to the story, about 120 years of it, but fans are still mad as hell at the close calls the Bills have been on the wrong side of. And suffered long for them. OJ Simpson. The Music City Miracle. The missed field goal in 1991 wide right. Scott Norwood. It is a long and arduous read for Western New York, and there might not be any end in sight!
9. How Do The Cincinnati Bengals Have Two Curses?
Bill Walsh is one of the best head coaches in NFL history, and in 1975 should have been the new Bengals hire. He was a great offensive coordinator, and yet he was passed up for Bill “Tiger” Johnson, who turned out to be a total schmuck. Walsh resigned, and joined the 49ers, who won lots of Super Bowls (including over the Bengals!).
Morons own the Bengals. Always have and always will.
But the other pain point has been this alleged “Bo Jackson Curse” which most people point to as being the more significant hex. Bo Jackson is pound for pound maybe the greatest athlete to play pro sports, just physically the apex of human power, grace, speed, technique, and versatility.
He played outfield for the Kansas City Royals (an excellent batter) and running back for the Oakland Raiders (an all-timer there too). But when facing the Bengals he was tackled by linebacker Kevin Walker and suffered a dislocated hip. That was the end of his career in the NFL, and a few years later it would be too for the MLB.
Many blame the team for ruining Bo’s body and cutting his career short. And the Bengals would go onto have their own cursed luck with injuries, like Joe Burrow every year.
8. Did Joe Namath sell his soul to the devil? Yes, yes he did
The most pathetic team in the NFL since 1970 has been the New York Jets. I root for the Jets, and clearly this team had its superstar, rock ‘n roll legend Joe Namath sell his soul to Satan to win Super Bowl III. Has to be the only explanation. He made the Hall of Fame with mediocre stats, more interceptions than lifetime touchdowns, went on to be in tons of commercials, get drunk on national TV live (and hit on a reporter), and face no consequences for his actions ever.
Since guaranteeing the Jets would win the major upset in SB III, the team has been a clown show. A literal laughing stock. Nothing to show for themselves since that championship afternoon, and it’s because Joe did a solid for us New Yorkers just the one time, and the devil himself made it so a lifetime of misery awaited the team. I truly believe that.
7. The Pottsville Curse
I had never heard of this before doing the research (and it was thorough research) because the team this involves is so invisible and irrelevant. Nobody thinks about the Arizona Cardinals, and no one roots for them. They just exist to be a punchline and lose games. The team itself has been around since 1898, and been moved around so many times and renamed so many times practically half of the US can claim them.
But in 1925, the NFL awarded the Cardinals (then in Chicago) the NFL Championship. But it later stripped the team of that title because it dared to play an exhibition game with another league. Then, NFL commissioner Joseph Carr suspended Pottsville Maroons (probably illegitimate), and the Cardinals would never come close to winning again ever. One Super Bowl appearance, and they blew that game late to Pittsburgh. What a bad loss.
6. The Cleveland Browns… Well, Everything
Oh man, where to even begin. What can I say about this town that hasn’t been yelled into the sky by angry Midwesterners already? Ohio is not a place for winners at any level. Not in baseball, not in football, not the people who live there, and mostly not the NBA (although LeBron James won in 2016, so props to him).
The Browns are mostly the focus here, however, because of the myriad of stupid decisions and things that happen to the Cleveland Browns. Like no Super Bowl appearances, losing heartbreaking AFC Championship games at the buzzer, their best players all being gigantic pieces of shit for abusing women, and of course the infamous move by the owners.
And I mean “move” literally and not figuratively.
The geniuses behind the Browns moved the team in the middle of the night from Cleveland to Baltimore, and thus creating the Ravens. That team went on to win two Super Bowls and have plenty of their own cancelled shit heels. But hey, at least they won, right?
Just packed up trucks and moved them! Insane. The team awarded to and built by the NFL in 1999 would go onto suck EVEN MORE and piss everyone off because of their sheer incompetence. Another 10,000 words could be written about this team, and still not capture what the fuck is going on.
5. The Curse of Billy Penn
Let me point out some quick facts for you:
- William Penn founded the colonial Province of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia.
- Philadelphia City Hall has a statue of him on the very top.
- It was agreed upon that the Philadelphia Art Commission would not approve any building taller than the statue of Mr. Penn.
- In March 1987, One Liberty Place was completed, and was, in fact, taller than the statue.
- No Philly team won anything from that point on until 2007. Coincidence? Or the curse working as intended?
- On June 18, 2007, construction workers finished the Comcast Center and at the very top, to end the curse, they placed a small figurine of William Penn.
- October 29, 2008 the Phillies win the World Series.
- November 27, 2017, the new tallest building was finished. The Comcast Technology Center again had a new William Penn figure on top.
- The Eagles go onto win two Super Bowls, one in 2018 and one in 2025.
I rest my case.
4. The Curse of Marcus Allen
To make a long story short, you can read this Reddit summary below. It involved Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen (the guy who replaced OJ Simpson in every sense) saying that the Raiders would never win again. He put a photo of the owner Al Davis in his freezer, and they haven’t done squat since!
3. The Honey Bears Curse
This is my favorite curse on here because of how much sense it makes, how easy it is to fix, and how ridiculous the entire saga is. Essentially, the Chicago Bears had cheerleaders called the Honey Bears starting in 1976, and the team won its only Super Bowl in 1985. In 1986, the cheerleading program was ended, and the squad was let go.
That’s because team owner George Halas died in 1983, and his daughter took over the team. Virginia Halas McCaskey decided that it was unbecoming to have women dance around on the sidelines, and the Bears haven’t won anything since. Fans blame firing the Honey Bears for their massive drop-off in quality since that ’85 team. And I don’t blame them!
2. The Curse of Bobby Layne
The Detroit Lions won the NFL championship in 1958, and then traded Hall of Fame quarterback Bobby Layne to the Steelers. He didn’t like the deal, and famously said the Lions would “not win for 50 years.”
And he undershot it! By a lot, because the Lions have never been to a Super Bowl, and have been a laughing stock since. One season they didn’t win a single game, that’s how much they sucked and continue to suck.
1. The Madden Cover Curse
In 1998, EA decided to put current players on the front cover of the “Madden NFL” games instead of John Madden. And year by year, strange things kept happening to the star athlete the following season. It’s been written about extensively, but countless players have had horrible seasons, had their careers ruined, suffered serious injuries, or something inexplicable happened to them.
Like how Michael Vick went to jail for dog fighting. Now, was it Madden’s fault he committed such a heinous crime and got caught? No. But it didn’t help he was on the cover of “Madden ’04,” so that had to factor into it a tiny bit, right?
Fans now lobby their favorite players from appearing on the front cover, and even made a website to voice their opinions on the matter. In any official vote from EA, the goal is to vote for the best player on your rival team so that bad luck can happen to them and not you.
Is current cover man Saquon Barkely going to suffer a terrible fate? Let’s find out. The season is not even half over as of the time of this writing.
Image Credit: Myron Mott
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