

This alleged curse supposedly prevented the Philadelphia Eagles franchise from winning the Super Bowl until Super Bowl LII. Two years later – in the last year of the supposed curse – the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl championship, while the Lions finished 0–16, the first team to lose every game of a 16-game season. When the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fifth Super Bowl championship in 2006, they won it at Ford Field, the Lions' current home stadium. The Lions' lone playoff win came against the Dallas Cowboys following the 1991 season. ĭespite 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 1966 that have not yet played in the Super Bowl. The veracity of this story has been disputed, particularly because the quote was never published at the time. In 1958, 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". Teams, players, and cities often cite a " curse" for many negative things, such as their inability to win a sports championship, or unexpected injuries.Īmerican football Detroit Lions

( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī 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 even cities. JSTOR ( May 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Sports-related curses" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
