Chris Dalman Madden Career 1996-2000 - Peak 84 OVR

Chris Dalman was a sixth-round pick out of Stanford in 1993 who spent his entire eight-year career in San Francisco and worked his way from backup to starting center. He won a Super Bowl ring on the 1994 team as a young reserve, then took over the middle of the line in 1996 and held it for the rest of the decade.

Madden's grades map that climb. Dalman sat in the 60s and low 70s in his early years, a 73, a 66, a 63, the numbers of a rotational lineman, before jumping to an 83 for the 1998 season and peaking at an 84 for 1999, once he was the entrenched starter snapping the ball every Sunday. The rating rose when the role did, the way an offensive lineman's usually does, since the game has little to measure until a man is actually starting.

He retired after the 2000 season and stayed in football as a coach, and the position stayed in the family: his son Drew Dalman became an NFL center of his own. Chris Dalman was never a Pro Bowler, just a smart, reliable pivot on a good line for the better part of a decade. Madden rated him exactly that, a backup who became a solid starter, the grade tracking his slow, earned rise up the depth chart.