The Madden curse was an urban legend which claimed that athletes who appeared on the box of Madden games would either under-perform or sustain an injury in the season following their game's release. After a 16-year streak of "bad luck" starting from Garrison Hearst's appearance on the box of Madden NFL 99 in 1998, the first Madden game to feature a cover athlete and not John Madden himself, the "curse" would finally be broken in 2014, when Calvin Johnson managed to have one of the best seasons in his career following his appearance on the box of Madden NFL 15. Although the streak ended, the curse would strike sporadically over the continuing years, but so far has not begun another continuing streak of bad luck. In 2010, a film adaptation of the Madden curse was announced by EA, but no news has surfaced on it since and it was presumably cancelled.

After a video surfaced in September of 2014 that showed Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice beating his fiancee in an elevator at a casino, EA removed Rice from the game entirely in an update released after launch.