Pierce Holt Madden Career 1992-1996 - Peak 74 OVR

Pierce Holt took the long way to the NFL. He came to football late and played at Angelo State, a Division II school in west Texas, before San Francisco spent a second-round pick on him in 1988. He turned into a productive defensive lineman on a championship front, winning rings in Super Bowls XXIII and XXIV and earning a Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro for the 1992 season.

Madden never saw it coming and barely saw it at all. The game rated Holt a 49 for the 1991 season and a 46 for 1992, the very year he was an All-Pro, one of the clearest cases on this roster of a number missing the player entirely. His best Madden grades, a 74 and a 69, came afterward, in Atlanta, where he signed a large free-agent contract in 1993 and played out the string on lesser teams. The game rated him highest when he was already past his best.

Holt finished with 37 sacks across eight seasons and two titles, an unlikely career for a small-school lineman who found the game late. Madden's numbers tell you almost nothing true about him, except perhaps that the games have always struggled to see the men who win in the trenches before anyone hangs a stat on them.