George Hegamin Madden Career 1995-1999 - Peak 82 OVR

George Hegamin came out of North Carolina State as the largest player in his 1994 draft class, six foot seven and better than 330 pounds, a freshman All-American and second-team All-ACC lineman who was supposed to be a wall. The Cowboys took him in the third round to develop behind an offensive line that was already among the best in football, and for his first two seasons he barely played, a body being brought along slowly on a team that did not need him yet.

The early Madden cards do him no favors and should not be trusted. His Madden NFL 95 entry lists an 82 propped up by a 99 awareness rating that no rookie backup earns, a pre-1997 data quirk from the old conversion scale, and the number collapses to a 59 the next year. The card only starts telling the truth once he does, settling to a 70 in Madden NFL 97 for the 1996 season when he finally saw the field, then a 73 in Philadelphia in 1998, the year he started sixteen games at left guard for the Eagles.

Hegamin got his ring as a roster member of the Super Bowl XXX champions after the 1995 season, though he played no regular-season snaps that year. His real football came later and elsewhere, as a starter in Philadelphia and a swing lineman in Tampa Bay. He finished with sixty-four games and seventeen starts, the career of a big man who was always more useful as depth than as a fixture. Madden's honest years, the 70 and the 73, are the ones that match the tape.