Lincoln Coleman Madden Career Madden NFL 1995 - Peak 78 OVR

Lincoln Coleman took about as unlikely a path to a Super Bowl as exists. A big power back who left Notre Dame and then Baylor without finishing, he was playing arena football when the Cowboys spotted him and signed him in 1993, an undrafted 249-pounder who became a short-yardage complement to Emmitt Smith almost overnight.

Madden has one card of him, a 78 in Madden NFL 95 for the 1994 season, propped up by a 98 awareness rating and undercut by a carrying score of 9, the incoherent grade the game gives a player it has almost no data on. It is the only rating he ever received.

Coleman won a Super Bowl XXVIII ring in that brief run, carrying the ball behind and beside the greatest rusher in league history, then his NFL time ended after just two seasons and 18 games. He went back to the arena game and won an ArenaBowl there years later, a genuine star in that league even as his NFL career flickered out. Madden's lone card is the whole of what the big game made of him: one glitchy 78 for a power back who came from nowhere, won a ring, and was gone.