Sports Team Is Cursed, Vol. 498

“The curse,” as applied to sports, is a vastly overused plot device. Sometimes, though, it applies. Consider the Falcons, who entered Sunday’s game against the 1-8 Buccaneers with a 5-5 record that allowed for an entirely plausible reason to hope for the postseason. Problem is, the Buccaneers seem to have actually put together some decent football as of late. The Falcons ended up with a narrow win over the Bucs, but, they lost their quarterback (Matt Ryan) and their running back (Michael Turner) to injury.

↵A visit to the live game thread of our Falcons blog, The Falcoholic, offers a pretty telling sampling of what the fans think about all this.

↵↵I don’t believe in curses….but damn, guys, is it THAT bad? Do we have the divine against us? :(

↵↵↵saints voodoo curse

↵↵↵Is [Anderson] like under some curse where you’re physically unable to sack a QB?

↵↵↵After all the injuries we’ve had
I’m not putting a curse out of the question.

↵↵↵Ok, I’m convinced. The curse lives. Turner heals quickly, he gets hurt. Ryan gets hurt. We get great field position, we give the ball away.

↵↵↵This is ridiculous. We’re supposed to be a good team, and every week for the past month my expectations have been lowered and lowered and lowered. Now I don’t know what to think.

↵↵↵The effing curse
Imma cry.

↵↵↵There seriously has to be a curse against us having back-to-back winning seasons. And whoever signed off on letting the Burner play this week instead of resting him up for the Eagles needs to be shot.

↵↵↵The Curse lives.
I can’t think of anything logical at this point.

↵↵↵Just wanted to go ahead and thank you guys for doing your part...
To make the Saints division champs this year!
As a gift, please accept this voodoo curse on your dirty birds.

↵↵↵I’ll accept the Curse
so that we’re 10-0 at this point next year and you guys are wondering what happened to your team. A fair trade, considering the circumstances.

↵↵↵We’re fighting the curse head on, now. Come on Heart Attack Birds

↵↵There’s surely more cursing to come -- both in the supernatural sense and in the more contemporary use of the word, I’m sure.