Who is the Texans Most Overrated Player?

Open up your mind, and lift it up to the blog.

The 2020 Houston Texans were terrible for a numerous number of malodorous reasons. Poor offensive design, not having DeAndre Hopkins in the redzone, Eric Murray being the source of improvement to an awful defense, one score record, the same offensive line struggles, a terrible run game, and, of course, a meek pass rush and a secondary that couldn’t cover.

One of the other problems that wasn’t previously listed, for the purposes of flow and paragraph structure, was that the Texans didn’t see much internal improvement aside from Deshaun Watson, who became a top five quarterback last season. Justin Reid regressed. Lonnie Johnson Jr. moved to safety and played right field in the middle of the field. Max Scharping was worse than he was the season before, thanks to Nick Martin stealing all the weights from the weight room for his own personal use. The wide variety of scratch off tickets weren’t worth anything. Zach Cunningham was paid to anchor the front seven, and once Benardrick McKinney went down, he couldn’t answer the call to do so.

We saw what Cunningham is great at. He’s a backside linebacker who outruns slothful offensive linemen and delivers kill shots on unsuspecting running backs. His speed his is strength. A bolt of lightning that turns into a hammer. The Texans employed him perfectly in 2019.

Last offseason he was paid to be a top front seven defender. Without Benardrick McKinney and D.J. Reader, Cunningham was forced to control the run game on his own. His run fits were drunk, his tackling was poor, and too often he was caught behind blocks. In open space, coverage especially, he watched skill players zip past him. Yet, because he had 164 total tackles, and was one of the league leaders in this metric, a lot of this was overlooked. He had plenty of chances to make tackles and plays on the ball, which he did, but there was a lot missing from his game last season.

This year, as Houston morphs to a 4-3, the Texans will probably move him back to the weakside, after a failed foray as the team’s Mike linebacker. This will allow him to do what he does best, chase and tackle, and minimize the rest.

Cunningham made the most at a great opportunity, saw his skillset maximized, and he got paid for it. That being said, his contract isn’t worth what he’s great at, and he needs work on his weaknesses to smooth out his game, to be the all around anchor that he was paid, and expected to be.

For these reasons, Cunningham is my pick for the Texans most overrated player. This is mine. What is yours? Who do you think is the Texans most overrated player?