Derek Ware Madden Career 1993-1997 - Peak 80 OVR

Derek Ware took the long road to the NFL, from Sacramento City College to Texas A&M to Central Oklahoma, a small-college tight end the Phoenix Cardinals took in the seventh round in 1992. He was a blocker first, just the end who plays five seasons without ever being the reason a defense game-plans, and his numbers reflect it, a career-best seventeen catches in 1994 and not much else.

The Madden cards tell that story bluntly. Ware sits in the 20s in most releases, about right for a blocking tight end with a handful of catches a year, and the one exception is a nonsense number. His Madden NFL 95 card lists an 80 propped up by an awareness rating near 99, a pre-1997 data quirk that has nothing to do with his actual play, and the grade collapses back to the 50s and 20s the moment the scale corrects. It is the clearest example on his card of the glitch inflating a role player into someone he never was.

Ware bounced from Arizona to Cincinnati to Dallas, where he spent his final season in 1996 as a depth blocker on a team that did not need his hands. He finished with twenty-four catches for 270 yards across fifty-eight games, no Super Bowl involvement, the honest resume of a small-college tight end who hung around the league for five years on blocking and effort.