Superstars may lead the discussion when it comes to success in the NFL, but more often than not, it’s the guys you barely know who will make the plays needed when they’re needed. Such players can be underrated for all kinds of reasons. Perhaps they’re playing in a smaller market, and the media isn’t appropriately trumpeting their exploits. Maybe they’re hidden in a depth chart behind bigger names who may not be doing as much. Or, it’s always possible that a wayward coach hasn’t quite figured out that one guy needs elevation to bring better results to the team.

Whatever the reason, we at SB Nation always like to bring the underrated names to you with the offseason Hidden Gems and in-season Secret Superstars series. You can also catch up on the AFC and NFC Secret Superstars for the 2026 season right here.

Here are our NFC Secret Superstars for Week 7 of the 2026 regular season. And if you haven’t yet, download the new SB Nation app, so you can better read our stuff and join the conversation wherever you are!

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Next Gen Stats, Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Sumer Sports unless otherwise indicated).

We’ve got guys from the NFL’s two best defenses in this Secret Superstars — Nick Emmanwori of the Seattle Seahawks, who rank first in Defensive DVOA, and Blake Cashman of the Vikings, who rank second. These two defenses couldn’t be any more different, which is fun. Mike Macdonald’s Seahawks defense is built on light boxes, heavy nickel and dime personnel, and subtle schematic twists of the knife. Brian Flores’ Vikings defense is built on blitz rates straight out of science fiction, simulated pressures that have opposing offensive linemen shaking their heads in disbelief, and a crazy quilt of disguised coverages.

When you run a defense like Flores does, you had better have ridiculously smart and athletic players who can take in all the madness and take it out on enemy offenses. The Vikings have a lot of those guys, and in their 16-10 win over the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday, nobody was more The Man than linebacker Blake Cashman.

Cashman’s NFL journey was far from automatic, though. A fifth-round pick of the New York Jets in 2019, the Minnesota alum (and Eden Prairie, Minnesota native) was traded to the Houston Texans for a 2023 sixth-round pick before the 2022 season began. Cashman acquitted himself well in his two seasons with DeMeco Ryans, even earning AFC Defensive Player of the Week honors in Week 6 of the 2023 season, but it was the Vikings, not the Texans, who signed him to a three-year, $22.5 million contract on March 13, 2024.

Cashman has been an important player in Flores’ defense all along, but what he did against the Colts was pure superstar stuff. With eight solo tackles, two sacks, four run stops, and four pass breakups, Cashman put up the best game we’ve seen from any NFL linebacker in quite a while.

“They flashed [his numbers] up on the [Jumbotron] and I was like, ‘Two sacks, four PBUs … what position is he playing? He’s everywhere,” safety Harrison Smith said of Cashman after the game. “I don’t think he always gets the credit he deserves, you know, more outside of this area, but he’s one of the best doing it right now, for sure.”

Cornerback Isaiah Rodgers was even more impressed — and jokingly worried about his own opportunities for production.

“When they said his stats, I said, ‘He got more pass deflections than us DBs!’” Rodgers quipped. “It feels good, for him to be a hometown kid — to do it out here in front of his family and friends.”

“I think he’s been exceptional for this defense,” safety Joshua Metellus added. “Shout out to him for the hell of a game he played today. All over the field. I couldn’t even make plays because he was all over the field. And anytime you got a middle linebacker like that, the defense is going to play great.”

The defense is playing great, and Blake Cashman is as responsible for that as anybody.

Through his first four NFL seasons, Chicago Bears cornerback Kyler Gordon amassed four sacks in 135 pass-rushing snaps. It wasn’t a major part of the repertoire for the 2022 second-round pick out of Washington.

Then, very suddenly, that all changed.

In the recorded history of sack statistics, which goes back to 1982 (unofficial sack numbers currently go back to 1960), only two players have put up four sacks in one half of football. The great Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs did it against the San Diego Chargers in 1992, and Chris Clemons of the Seattle Seahawks did it against the Green Bay Packers in 2012. It’s one of the rarest and most remarkable feats in football for even the most dynamic edge-rushers, so what would you say if a cornerback basically pulled it off in 30 minutes of game clock?

Well, cornerback Kyler Gordon of the Chicago Bears just did it, albeit in a two-game stretch. With 12:03 left in the third quarter of Chicago’s 31-23 Week 6 win over the Atlanta Falcons, Gordon took quarterback Michael Penix Jr. down on a blitz, and he did it again with 5:41 left in the third quarter, and again with 3:01 left in the fourth quarter.

And then, with 11:35 left in the first quarter Chicago’s 30-24 win over the New England Patriots in Week 7, Gordon sacked Drake Maye. It was a Tiger Slam tying of the record in that it didn’t all happen in one game, but when a cornerback has four sacks in less than 30 clock minutes of football… well, that bears noticing. That he did all that in 17 pass rush snaps over those two games is even more remarkable, and he added two forced fumbles with those sacks.

Not bad for a guy who had been out since Week 14 of the 2025 season due to injury.

“It was exciting to see,” defensive coordinator Dennis Allen said in the week after the Falcons game. “I think he did some things that we’ve always felt that he could do for us. I’ve always thought that there was a way that we could utilize him and that he could really help us win games. He was big in the game this week. We’ll see how things play out moving forward. He was in a kind of a limited role last week; I would kind of expect something very similar. Yet, we’re just getting into the game plan process now. So, there’s a lot that has to happen over the course of the next three days.

“He’s got outstanding quickness and he’s really elusive. His ability to stutter his feet and then accelerate or his ability to dip the hip and turn the corner; he just has a knack for it and an innate ability to find the quarterback. Some guys really have that, some don’t and I think he does. I think he’s got a natural instinct for it.”

Clearly, Gordon does. Shawn Springs of the team that became the Commanders set the NFL record for a cornerback with six sacks in the 2004 season. At this rate, Gordon could have that in the bag by mid-November.

The NFL is full of versatile defensive backs these days, and few are more effectively versatile than Kyle Hamilton of the Baltimore Ravens. Since he was selected with the 14th pick in the 2022 draft out of Notre Dame, Hamilton has seen his role(s) change over time based on the Ravens’ defensive needs, and his own development. Hamilton has become the rare kind of player who may split his snaps from the box to the slot to the deep third in snap rate, and wherever he lands in the defense suddenly gets better. Early in his career, Hamilton was more of a box/slot defender before he became truly functionally versatile in an NFL sense.

When the Seattle Seahawks selected South Carolina safety Nick Emmanwori with the 35th overall pick in the second round of the 2025 draft, everyone immediately identified Emmanwori as potentially Mike Macdonald’s new Kyle Hamilton. The Seahawks’ head coach was in his first year as Baltimore’s defensive coordinator when Hamilton was drafted, and it was Macdonald who helped Hamilton on his way through the 2023 season, after which the Seahawks hired him to replace Pete Carroll. Having an outsized (Emmanwori is 6’3”, 224; Hamilton is 6’4”, 220) enforcer who can do just about anything is quite the advantage if said enforcer can get the hang of modern NFL defense.

Against the Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday night in a 20-3 Seahawks win, Emmanwori did as much as humanly possible to prove that he’s got it all down. Like Hamilton, Emmanwori was primarily a box/slot guy in his rookie season, and he’s added a knack for pressuring quarterbacks from the line of scrimmage. Against the Chiefs, who struggled offensively as they never had before in the Patrick Mahomes era, Emmanwori played 16 snaps at the line, 16 in the box, and 20 in the slot.

Wherever he went, and whatever he did, chaos ensued for the Chiefs. Emmanwori was rushing like an edge-rusher, playing the slot with the route quickness you’d expect from a much shorter, lighter player, and working the box like a linebacker.

“I think it showed everything I can do,” Emmanwori said of his big night. “Lined up at defensive end, covering in the slot, run tackling, and being aggressive. The coaches let me be me. Building a game plan that fits the whole defense, and that’s how everybody works.”

As for taking Xavier Worthy and his 4.2 speed up the field like he was a smaller slot cornerback, Emmanwori has always been about that in his own mind.

“I grew up playing defensive back. I’m not scared out there in space to cover guys. I know the defensive coaches know what I can do, they know what I have. Other teams probably don’t, but it’s good just to put that on film. I like those plays. I like to run. I was looking for it, and it was great.”

So, how do you build a player who can do so many things?

“It’s a little bit of a process, honestly,” Emmanwori concluded. “I feel like the coaches would tell you it’s a process, too. Throughout the week, just making sure I’m getting all my reps all over the field. Whether it’s defensive end, nickel, whatever package they have for me. Making sure I’m getting a lot of reps, but also keeping me limited where I’m not burning myself out mentally or physically. It’s something new that I feel like they are going through too, and we’re steadily growing and changing stuff throughout the week. It’s a different process that you wouldn’t really know how it goes until you actually watch it in practice and watch it in meetings.”

Emmanwori has become That Guy — the epicenter of the NFL’s most constricting defense. Not unlike Kyle Hamilton at his best.