Tommy Thompson Madden Career 1996-1998 - Peak 86 OVR

Tommy Thompson punted at Oregon, where he was an all-conference pick, and made the NFL as an undrafted specialist, handling the punting for San Francisco from 1995 to 1998. He was the whole of his job description, a punter on a good team, flipping field position and otherwise staying out of the way.

Madden's cards of him are the erratic set the game reserves for punters. It rated him an 86 for the 1995 season, a calculated figure off the old scale, then a 41, then a 76, the numbers bouncing around without much meaning because the game has never known quite how to grade a punter. None of it says much about how he actually kicked.

Thompson averaged 41.9 yards on 208 career punts across four seasons, all with the 49ers, a perfectly respectable line for a specialist. He was an anonymous punter on a roster full of stars, just the player nobody notices unless he shanks one, and Madden's noisy grades are a fittingly incoherent record of a quiet, useful career.