Michael McGruder Madden Career 1992-1998 - Peak 79 OVR

Michael McGruder was an undrafted cornerback out of Kent State who made a nine-year NFL career out of persistence, bouncing through Green Bay, Miami, San Francisco, Tampa Bay and New England. His two years with the 49ers, in 1992 and 1993, were the best of them: he intercepted five passes in 1993, a genuine contributor in a deep secondary.

Madden's grades for him are all over the place, the way the old-scale numbers tend to be for a journeyman. The game rated him a 59 as a Dolphin, a 49 in his first 49ers card, and slowly built him up to a peak of 79 by the 1997 season with the Patriots, the erratic climb of a role player it never had much data on. The awareness scores, a zero here, a 7 there, tell you how little it knew.

McGruder reached a Super Bowl with New England after the 1996 season, a loss, and finished with six career interceptions before retiring. He never won a title and never held a job long, a well-traveled depth corner of the kind every roster carries and few fans recall. The numbers wandered because his career did.