Julius Thomas Madden Career 2012-2018 - Peak 89 OVR

Julius Thomas played four years of college basketball at Portland State and only one season of football before Denver took him in the fourth round, 129th overall, in 2011. For two years he barely saw the field. Then Peyton Manning arrived and turned the converted forward into a red-zone nightmare. Thomas caught 12 touchdowns in 2013 and 12 more in 2014, and in the 2014 opener he hauled in three first-half scores from Manning, matching Shannon Sharpe's franchise record for a Broncos tight end in a single game.

The Madden numbers mirror the leap. He sat at 64 and 62 in the 2011 and 2012 editions, invisible, then jumped to 87 in 2014 and topped out at 89 in the 2015 edition. A free-agent move to Jacksonville and a year in Miami never recaptured Denver's magic. Thomas walked away in 2018 to chase a doctorate in clinical health psychology, an unusual second act for a man who once looked like the best pass-catching tight end in football.