John Jett Madden Career 1995-2004 - Peak 84 OVR

John Jett arrived at East Carolina as an unrecruited walk-on and left as a four-year starter and eventual school Hall of Famer, then went undrafted in 1993 and signed with Dallas, taking the punting job from Mike Saxon. He landed on the PFWA All-Rookie team and made his living the way the best position punters do, pinning opponents deep and leading the league in punts downed inside the twenty.

The early Madden cards for a punter are close to noise, swinging from a 47 to a 79 to a 36 across his Dallas years with a punt-power rating in one release that reads like a typo. The number only steadies once he moved to Detroit in 1997, and from there it climbs the way his craft matured, an 83 in Madden NFL 2001 and a peak 84 in Madden NFL 2004 built on 88 ratings in both punt power and punt accuracy, the game finally catching up to a specialist who had been quietly excellent for a decade.

Jett won two Super Bowls with the Cowboys, XXVIII after the 1993 season and XXX after 1995, and he was not around for XXVII because he had not yet joined the team. His career ran to 1993 through 2003 and 159 games, ending on a calf injury in Detroit, with a 42.4 gross average and a reputation for field position over raw distance. Madden's late peak is the fair verdict, a steady punter rated best in his thirties, exactly when he was.