It's correlation vs. causation. We have 16 NFL games a week, 17 weeks a year. Over that many games, year after year, some fake "trends" are going to develop just out of basic statistical probability that people try and label a reason to. People can try and say it's cold in December, but they play in Texas. People can try and say they are chokers, but the team is composed of completely different people now than they were when this "trend" started.
Remember, it wasn't that long ago that the Dolphins were the December chokers. Every year they'd start hot and fade in December. Everyone said that a warm weather team couldn't handle the cold of Foxboro/Buffalo, but even years where they got their division rivals at home in December it didn't help. Here we are a few years later and now the Dolphins have been strong in December the last few years, but they still play in Miami all year, nothing has changed with the weather.
It's barely different than the "Madden curse" really. Correlation.
I disagree. Athletes don't get it into their heads that they're going to get injured because they were on the Madden cover. But players can and do allow those "trends" to mess with their heads. It's a mental game-- just ask Nick Folk. A team can become interested in reversing a trend, focus on it, try too hard and hurt themselves in the long run. In the case of Dallas, there's merit to that trend. They don't play as well in December as they do the rest of the year. If the only thing those Dallas clubs have in common is the trend itself...it's in their heads.
Nick Folk is a poor example. There's a big difference between the mental aspects of being out there for a single play, performing a single action, while everyone is staring at you than their is the mental aspect of an entire group of 52 players over the course of an entire game. So when a lineman whiffs on a block in a December game do you think it's because it was in his head that this was December so he's not supposed to be as good of a blocker now, or do you think it's just because linemen miss blocks and this one happened to be in December? Do you think when Newman gets beat for a TD it's because he knows he's supposed to be a worse defender, or is it because cornerbacks get beaten for TDs and this one just happened to be in December?If anything, I would think the opposite of what you say would be more true. It seems feasible that a player on the Madden cover could know about the injury "curse" and play more passively because of it, which often times is what actually leads to injuries. Sort of a stretch, but much less of one than
an entire large group of players that's different every year all suffering the exact same bizarre symptoms of somehow playing worse because they're aware of what month of the year it is.
And again, no one's addressed the Dolphins. They're "December fade" disappeared. Why? Was it because they took some classes on how to deal with the mental aspects that the month of December brings along, or was it just because statistical probability eventually balances out? My money is on the latter.
Also, one thing that people haven't addressed is that this is the Cowboys, and NFC East team we're talking about here. Those four teams are the most schizophrenic teams in the world. Every year the outlook of that division looks completely different in week 5 than it does in week 10 than it does in week 15. In week 5 one of the teams is seen as unbeatable while two are seen as in big trouble, then by week 10 that unbeatable team is now looked at as chumps while the two previously struggling team are seen as unbeatable. It's all cyclical in that division, eventually.
