my .02... I think Hillis was selected to be the cover athlete. However, it's purely because everybody was voting against their guy on the cover. The Madden curse seems to gain more ground year after year... I buy it in one sense, the player that makes the cover almost always just had their best statistical season to date, and fairly often played very deep in the postseason and or accrued a ridiculous amount of carries during the season. So they are much more likely get injured the next year since their bodies have much less time to recover than the other players in the league. However casual fan hears madden curse and believes above all else... Anyways, back to Hillis winning and how he did it. Fans saw their guy up against Hillis and instead of voting for their guy (aaron rodgers, adrian peterson at others) they voted for Hillis to try and make sure their guy didnt get cursed.... Cleveland also voted for their guy because well its cleveland, they aren't in danger of being any more cursed than they currently are. Hillis for that reason is almost uncurseable. His team can't go backwards, his stats weren't all world, so he could probably repeat them. Short of a broken leg he is really the uncurseable one...
If true, that would amaze me how strong the curse of Maddened is in peoples minds. Btw, didnt Brees have a solid year last season? I'm surprised this wouldn't dispel more people .
The playoff debacle,torn mcl and the much higher interception total could build a case for the madden curse still existing. He wasn't horrible but it was his worst season in the past few years. Fitzgerald dodged it last year on the dual cover but Polamalu didn't.
