A sports-related curse is a superstitious belief in the effective action of some malevolent power, that is used to explain the failures or misfortunes of specific sports teams, players, or cities.
Teams, players, and cities often cite a " curse " for many negative things, such as their inability to win a sports championship, or unexpected injuries. In , the Detroit Lions traded Bobby Layne to the Pittsburgh Steelers , with Layne responding to the trade by supposedly saying that the Lions would "not win for 50 years".
Despite this, in the 50 years after the trade, the Lions accumulated the worst winning percentage of the 12 teams in the National Football League NFL at the time, and are still one of only two franchises that were in the NFL prior to that have not yet played in the Super Bowl. When the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fifth Super Bowl championship in , they won it at Ford Field , the Lions' current home stadium.
Two years later β in the last year of the supposed curse β the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl championship , while the Lions finished 0β16 , the first team to lose every game of a game season. In the fourth quarter, the Lions were unable to recover an onside kick late in the game, and eventually lost 34β In the season , the Lions got out to their best start in franchise history since their inaugural season at , including a franchise record win streak of eleven straight victories and winning all of their regular season road games for the first time in franchise history.
The Kirk Cousins curse refers to a curse in which an NFL team who has lost to quarterback Kirk Cousins has failed to win a Super Bowl since he entered the league in The Packers were eliminated by the 49ers, and the curse nearly took effect for the 49ers in the NFC Championship game against the Detroit Lions when they trailed 24β7 before rallying to win the game.
