Wade Wilson Madden Career 1992-1999 - Peak 77 OVR

Wade Wilson was an eighth-round pick out of East Texas State in 1981 who turned a strong left arm into an eighteen-year NFL career, first as a Vikings starter and then as one of the league's most respected veteran backups. He made the Pro Bowl for Minnesota in 1988, the high point of his playing days, before settling into the journeyman role that would define the rest of them.

He landed in Dallas in 1995 as Troy Aikman's backup, and it is there he collected a Super Bowl XXX ring, a veteran insurance policy on a champion. Madden rated him a backup accordingly, peaking at a 77 late in his career with the Raiders, with a glitchy card or two in the Dallas years that list him at a nonsensical 1, a data error the old scale produced.

Wilson's real second career came on the sideline, where he spent nearly two decades as an NFL quarterbacks coach, most of it back in Dallas developing passers. He died in 2019, on his sixtieth birthday, from complications of the Type 1 diabetes he had managed throughout his life. Madden's grades caught a solid veteran arm; the coaching, and the players he shaped, are the larger legacy of a lifer who spent almost forty years in the game.