Mike Walter Madden Career 1992-1994 - Peak 76 OVR

Mike Walter came into the league as a second-round pick of the Cowboys out of Oregon in 1983, then got waived a year later and claimed by San Francisco off the scrap heap in August 1984. It turned into one of the quieter good moves of the dynasty. Walter moved inside to middle linebacker and became a fixture, leading the 49ers in tackles three years running from 1987 to 1989 and earning second-team All-Pro honors in that last one.

Madden's read on him jumps around the way its early-1990s numbers do. Walter was a 76 for the 1991 season, dropped to a 46 for 1992, then climbed back to a 69 for 1993, a 30-point swing that had nothing to do with how he was actually playing, which was steadily, the same as always. The grades never captured a player whose whole worth was showing up and making the tackle every Sunday.

He started for a decade and won three Super Bowls, after the 1984, 1988 and 1989 seasons, and retired after 1993 having spent his entire post-Dallas career in one place. Walter was a player good teams are quietly built on, a castoff who outlasted the men drafted ahead of him. Madden rated the swings. He just kept making the tackle.