The Atlanta Falcons had a little fun this week, spotlighting Chris Lindstrom with a Madden NFL 27 player-card post and the blunt caption “The OG.” The card puts the Falcons’ right guard at 93 overall, which is a step down from the 94 he carried into Madden NFL 26.
That number still keeps Lindstrom in elite territory, even if Madden’s latest rankings didn’t push him into the game’s top 10 offensive linemen. According to Madden Ratings, his Power Archetype card gives him a 97 Awareness, his highest individual attribute.
For Atlanta, the post was a simple nod to one of the most dependable players on the roster. Lindstrom was drafted 14th overall out of Boston College in 2019, and since then he has started every game he has been healthy enough to play. He’s now a four-time Pro Bowler and four-time second-team All-Pro, with 105 career games all as a starter.
The rating also left him just outside the top of the guard class in Madden’s own numbers. FOX Sports listed Chicago’s Joe Thuney as the highest-rated interior lineman at 96 overall, followed by Denver’s Quinn Meinerz at 95 and Indianapolis’ Quenton Nelson at 94. FOX Sports pointed to Lindstrom’s omission from that group as one of the more notable snubs in the reveal, calling him one of the league’s most dependable interior linemen.
Madden Ratings’ guard list backs that up in a different way: Thuney sits at 96, Meinerz at 95, Nelson at 94, and Lindstrom at 93.
The Falcons’ social post kept the message simple, tagging Lindstrom’s personal account and letting the nickname do the work. “The OG” was the entire point.
And the on-field numbers explain why Lindstrom continues to get that kind of respect. He finished the 2025 season with an 88.4 overall grade from Pro Football Focus, which ranked second among 81 qualified guards.
His 91.7 run-blocking grade also ranked second at the position. The year before, a Falcons-focused report from SI/OnSI said he finished as PFF’s highest-graded guard in the league at 93.5, and that his 94 overall in Madden NFL 26 made him the second-highest-rated guard in that year’s game.
Even with that résumé, Lindstrom still hasn’t gotten the kind of national spotlight his play suggests he deserves. Atlanta’s playoff drought stretched to an eighth straight year in 2025, and the attention offensive linemen get often tracks with team success. A recent SI/OnSI feature on Lindstrom made that point directly, arguing his lack of wider acclaim has more to do with the Falcons’ record than with anything he’s done on the field.
Madden NFL 27 is scheduled to launch worldwide on Aug. 21, and EA Sports has been rolling out its position-by-position top-10 lists ahead of release. Lindstrom’s rating won’t change again until an in-season update, the same process that moved him up a point between Madden 25 and Madden 26 last year. For now, he sits at 93 - strong enough to anchor any line, but not quite enough to crack Madden’s top 10.
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