What a time to be alive. I’ve been watching the Detroit Lions for 38 years and I’m covering them for an 11th season this year. There has never been a time in which the Lions were just the talk of the league and everyone loved them. It’s pretty awesome. The Lions made the cover the latest Sports Illustrated and the publication even picked them to win the Super Bowl.
What a beautiful cover this is. Jared Goff, Penei Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown sitting in this 1957 Ford Fairlane. One of the hottest cars around the last time the Lions were champions.
While this cover is awesome, there are some out there that find it to be a curse. The idea being that this cover means the Lions will falter this year is really all based off the Lions being on the cover of the preseason issue in 2012. You know, the Megatron and Mega-Arm one.
The Lions were coming off a big 10-6 season in 2011 and went to the playoffs for the first time in a decade the year before. They were expected to build off of that and then wound up going 4-12 in 2012. There were a lot of reasons for that, the Sports Illustrated cover wasn’t one of them.
Still, I thought it might be fun today to look back on every time the Lions were on the cover of Sports Illustrated and see what happened right after that to see if there’s any kind of curse, or if it’s just a silly thing Lions fans believe in.
Quick rules here. The Lions have to be prominent on the cover or be the cover story. It can’t be like a Lions player getting tackled or something. That doesn’t count. It also can’t be a Lions player from their time in college or on another team. That seems obvious, but still. Lastly, we aren’t including Sports Illustrated For Kids issues.
The Lions graced the cover for the first time in 1955. Hall of Fame running back Doak Walker was the cover man for this one. The Lions went 3-7 after this cover dropped. Not off to a super great start are we? The Lions wouldn’t appear on the SI cover again for nearly 10 years.
The legendary Alex Karas graced the cover for this one. It was late in the season so whatever had been done had been done. The Lions won their final two games of the year after this cover and Karas was named to the All-Pro second team shortly after.
The great Alex Karas makes the cover another issue. This was the final year of Karas’ career in the NFL. The Lions were pretty good this year. They went 7-3 after this cover dropped and made the playoffs.
First it was Doak Walker and now it’s Billy Sims. You obviously know this won’t be the last Lions running back to make a cover. The Lions went 6-7 after this cover came out, but the team finished the year 9-7 and went to the playoffs. Billy Sims would win Rookie of the Year and was added to the All-Pro second team and made the Pro Bowl. Pretty solid season.
Like we said, there would be another. You knew that already though. Barry Sanders makes his first cover ever. The Lions went 6-9 right after this came out and finished the year at 6-10. That team was young a not ready yet. We know what they would do the next season though. Sanders led the league in both rushing yards and rushing touchdowns and made the ALL-Pro first team and the Pro Bowl.
This was part of a duel cover release. You could either get one with Barry Sanders on the cover or one with Bills receiver Steve Tasker on it. The Lions only played one game after this release and it was against the Eagles in the playoffs. They lost. Still, this was an insane season that saw the Lions start 0-3 and then finish 10-6 and have the number one offense in the NFL.
This is right after Barry Sanders abrupt retirement. We don’t have to get too much into that, but the Lions did have a season right after this and they went 8-8 and made the playoffs. Not too bad I suppose.
Welp, this one happened. You can’t even come close to blaming a magazine cover for how bad this football team was during this time. You just can’t. With that said, the Lions went 0-7 after this cover came out and finished up a 3-13 season. Joey Harrington would throw for 746 yards, four touchdowns and five interceptions before getting injured against the Bucs in Week 15 and missing the final two games of the year.
The Lions were the talk of the NFL after starting the season 5-0 in 2011. They went 5-6 after this cover came out and made it back to the playoffs for the first time in a decade with a 10-6 record. They lost to the Saints in the playoffs. still, this was quite the season. Hard to say it’s a curse because they did make the playoffs. The next cover is the Megatron, Mega-arm cover we already talked about. We’ll skip that one.
Another duel cover. You could get this one or one with Auburn football’s Chris Davis and Ricardo Louis on the cover. The 2013 season was completely in the books at this point. I don’t know why this cover was a thing.
This one is kind of hard to find. It was part of a four cover release. Matthew Stafford shares the cover with then Bears quarterback Jay Cutler. The Lions went 11-5 after this cover dropped and they made the playoffs. Not bad at all.
Now that we’ve looked through all the covers, I think it’s safe to say that there is no curse directly linked to being on the cover. In most cases the Lions wound up being just fine after words and made the playoffs. there were some other times were they just simply shouldn’t have been on the cover becasue they weren’t very good. If the Lions falter this year, it’s not going to be because of Sports Illustrated.