A sports curse is a superstitious belief used to explain a team's or player's persistent failures, and one of the most famous is the "Bobby Layne curse" on the Detroit Lions. After the Lions traded quarterback Bobby Layne to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1958, he allegedly said they wouldn't win for 50 years, and indeed the Lions struggled for decades, never reaching the Super Bowl and even going 0–16 in 2008, the last year of the supposed curse. The curse seemed to persist, as the Lions blew a 24–7 halftime lead to the San Francisco 49ers in the 2023–24 NFC Championship (mirroring a 1957 comeback), and in 2024–25, despite a franchise-best 15–2 record and the #1 seed, they were upset by the Washington Commanders 45–31 with five turnovers, a key penalty, and distractions from coordinator interviews—all while dealing with injuries to 22 players, including star defensive end Aidan Hutchinson. The article also mentions a separate "Kirk Cousins curse," where any NFL team that loses to quarterback Kirk Cousins has failed to win a Super Bowl since he entered the league in 2012. These curses highlight how fans and media use superstition to explain heartbreaking losses and long championship droughts.