Getty Image
There are plenty of people who would tell you sports teams have fallen victim to curses; the Red Sox can supposedly credit their 86-year World Series drought to a trade involving Babe Ruth, and the Lions are still looking to lift a jinx linked to a former player. There’s also the New York Giants, who may be able to trace some of their current woes to a picture taken on a boat in 2017.
There are also plenty of people who would tell you it’s foolish to buy into the notion those curses exist. Sure, a lot of guys have gotten injured after appearing on the cover of a Madden game and plenty of teams have suffered some setbacks after Drake hopped aboard their bandwagon, but it probably makes more sense to chalk it up to coincidence as opposed to fate.
With that said, it can also be pretty hard to ignore those links.
That’s the case with the aforementioned photo featuring members of the Giants wide receiving core that was snapped when they were gearing up for a playoff run. The players who posed were subjected to plenty of backlash when it first surfaced, but as time has passed, it’s become increasingly difficult to ignore how the franchise has fared since the day it was taken.
The Giants may have been cursed by the picture some players took on a boat
Getty Image
To set the stage, the Giants had recently capped off the regular season with a win over Washington on New Year’s Day a week after they’d clinched a spot in the playoffs, and they were slated to face off against the Packers at Lambeau Field in a wild card matchup scheduled for January 8th.
Now, it seems like the smart move would be to lay low and spend the week preparing for the showdown with Green Bay, but a few guys had a different plan in mind and opted to head down to Miami shortly after beating the team now known as the Commanders.
On January 2nd, Odell Beckham Jr., Victor Cruz, Sterling Shephard, and Roger Lewis made the trek to LIV and found themselves partying with Justin Bieber and Trey Songz at the famed nightclub in Miami Beach. That second musical artist chronicled some of those misadventures in real time on Snapchat, and the crew was out on the town until 6 A.M. the following morning.
When they woke up, the quartet of wide receivers linked back up with Songz on the yacht where they ended up posing for the picture that quickly went viral after it made its way onto the internet.
While head coach Ben McAdoo and Eli Manning didn’t seem to have any issue with how the WRs decided to spend their off days, they were in the minority, as the WRs were mercilessly clowned for their poses, the choice of attire, and (of course) the decision to be on a boat in Miami less than a week before a playoff game.
Things really came to a head when they headed to Green Bay only to get sent home for the season following the brutal 38-13 loss that caused Beckham to punch a hole in a wall.
Since then, it’s been a very rough ride for a Giants team, as this is have they’ve fared in the wake of the yacht photo:
- 2017: 3-13
- 2018: 5-11
- 2019: 4-12
- 2020: 6-10
- 2021: 4-13
- 2022: 9-7-1
- 2023: Opened up the season with a disastrous loss to the Cowboys
While the team did make the playoffs in 2022, that was really the lone bright spot in the years that have followed the boat photo. The receivers in the picture have since expressed some regrets (none more than Victor Cruz), but it’s going to be harder and harder for fans to ignore the link between the picture and the team’s woes the longer they spend attempting to turn things around.