From out of the league to Eagles starter – Zach Cunningham's wild journey

When late July came around, there were nearly 3,000 football players in NFL training camps around the country. 

Zach Cunningham was not one of them. 

Cunningham, the one-time Texans second-round pick, spent last year with the Titans and was released after the season ended. 

Free agency came and went, the offseason came and went, training camps got underway, and still Cunningham was back home in Houston working out on his own and waiting for a phone call. 

“I was patient and I just trusted the process,” Cunningham. “That was my entire mindset. Just being patient.”

Being patient is fine and good, but it’s hard to prepare to play football when you can’t play football. So while those 3,000 guys – including a few hundred linebackers – worked out in NFL training camps day after day, Cunningham was at the gym, trying to prepare for a tryout he wasn't sure was coming. 

“You really have to do the most you can because you can't really replicate football shape unless you're actually doing it,” he said. “So I was doing cardio, lifting, but it’s not the same.” 

Finally, the call came. 

On Aug. 6, the Eagles, extremely thin and inexperienced at linebacker, brought in Cunningham and Myles Jack for workouts, and signed both of them the same day. 

“I'm thinking I'm coming out here just for a workout and then come back home and we'll see what happens,” Cunningham said at his locker Thursday. "But we came out here, worked out and signed that same day. It was a crazy process.” 

It was Jack who immediately began taking first-team reps across from Nakobe Dean while Cunningham started out with the third defense. 

Gradually that changed. Cunningham worked his way up the depth chart, Jack retired, and Cunningham found himself in the Eagles’ starting lineup a month after joining the team. 

“One thing you do notice right from the beginning when we first got him, was he's a veteran, he's played a lot of good football in this league, and he has some really good instincts and feel for the game,” defensive coordinator Sean Desai said. “So he's able to learn the defense relatively quickly because he's had some experiences and that's shown, and that's what's kind of helped him impact us on defense at a relatively quick rate.” 

After an uneven opener in New England, Cunningham has settled nicely into Desai’s defense. He’s second to Reed Blankenship with 16 tackles and he’s got a tackle for loss and a fumble recovery as well. He’s been solid in coverage (18 targets, 56 yards) and he’s become a frequent blitzer as well. Not perfect but not bad at all considering he only had half a training camp.

“I get into shape pretty easy, but getting back to playing and learning the defense, it’s definitely a process,” Cunningham said. “But from the moment I got here, they made it easy for me. The vets on the team, the other linebackers, the coaches.  

“Getting extra work in with me, going over plays and just doing extra stuff made it easy for me to get acclimated really quickly into the system. The mental part is the toughest. Being away, just getting back into the game, getting back to seeing everything.” 

So far so good. The Eagles’ defense has had its ups and downs – they’re No. 1 vs. the run, but they’ve allowed eight passing TDs, second-most in the NFL.  But considering that they lost starters T.J. Edwards and Kyzir White to free agency and Dean to Injured Reserve, Cunningham – as well as Nicholas Morrow – has helped the Eagles stay afloat at linebacker.

“You see that on tape, you see his physicalness,” Desai said. “You see his range, his play making ability. He uses his hands well at the point of attack. Obviously, can move well. He is quick side to side. All of that stuff shows up on tape for him, and the more he keeps learning and growing within this defense and the finer points of the defense, he'll just continue to keep improving.”

Dean is due back for the Jets game in two weeks and we’ll see what the linebacker rotation looks like then. The season began with Dean and Cunningham starting, so maybe that will be the case. But Morrow has played well too.

The bottom line is that Cunningham has played better than anybody could have imagined for a guy who was home on the couch the first two weeks of training camp. 

“I feel like each week, just getting better, getting more acclimated back to playing how I want to play,” Cunningham said.  

“Some plays I feel like I can do better on. Still a couple of kinks. But I feel like I've been working on getting better and I think it’s starting to show up on the field.”

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