Mike Saxon Madden Career 1992-1996 - Peak 86 OVR

Mike Saxon punted through the worst years of the Cowboys and just barely into the best. A San Diego State walk-on who set the school's career punting record, he was drafted by Detroit in the eleventh round in 1984, spent two seasons in the USFL, then took over the Dallas punting job in 1985 and held it for eight years, the whole grim stretch from the end of Tom Landry through the teardown-and-rebuild under Jimmy Johnson.

His Madden cards from that era are modest and roughly honest, a 62 in Madden NFL 92 and a 69 the next year, built on a solid punt-power number and middling accuracy, the profile of a dependable leg on a team that gave him plenty of chances to use it. The outlier is his Madden NFL 96 card in Minnesota, an 86 inflated by the old rating scale rather than by any late-career surge, one of the quirks that makes the mid-90s numbers read high.

Saxon was on the roster for Super Bowl XXVII after the 1992 season, his last in Dallas, and had a punt blocked in the win over Buffalo, a small rough note on the way out the door. The Cowboys released him that summer, and he finished up in New England and Minnesota. He punted more than 800 times for a 41.7 average across his career, the workmanlike record of a man who spent the lean years keeping field position while everyone waited for the roster to catch up.