Steve Wallace Madden Career 1992-1997 - Peak 79 OVR

Steve Wallace played at Auburn and came to San Francisco in the fourth round in 1986, then grew into the job that matters most on the offensive line: left tackle, guarding the blind side of Joe Montana and Steve Young. He started for a decade, won three Super Bowls, and made the Pro Bowl for the 1992 season, a dependable anchor on the left edge.

Madden rated him the way it rates a solid, unspectacular tackle, which is to say slowly and upward. Wallace went from a 56 for the 1991 season to a 63, a 72, and finally a 79 for 1995, the grade creeping up year by year as he became the entrenched starter, never spiking, never sliding, a fair reading of a player whose whole value was reliability.

He is remembered, though, for something you could see from the stands: the thick padded ProCap he strapped over his helmet after a string of concussions, an early and lonely nod to a danger the sport spent years ignoring. Wallace finished up with the Chiefs and retired in 1997. Three rings, one Pro Bowl and a decade of clean pockets, and a cushion on his head that looks, in hindsight, less like a quirk than a warning.