A corner as a big, interchangeable nickel? It’s a Seahawks possibility with Quinton Dunbar
Quinton Dunbar says learning his new Seahawks playbook online, remotely on Zoom calls, hasn’t been all that big an obstacle.
He’s too pumped about being in Seattle’s defensive scheme to be discouraged by a pandemic.
“It’s a perfect fit,” the cornerback Seattle acquired in a trade with Washington this spring said, multiple times, on yet another online Zoom call Thursday morning from his home in Florida.
There’s only been one thing that’s gotten to him during these last two months of stay-at-home orders because of the COVID-19 virus. His daughter Denim, almost 3, has narrowed his home entertainment options to just one, animated film. And only one.
The movie. The soundtrack. Daddy Dunbar is doing both. Every day. Even in Karaoke with his girl.
“She’s still stuck on Frozen. It’s just Frozen,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know, kids go crazy for Frozen. That’s it.”
Asked if he’s getting sick of Frozen by now, Dunbar laughed again.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
Dunbar is taking one message from the mega-hit Disney movie into his new NFL life with the Seahawks. Of his time he asked out of in Washington after five years and a career-best 2019 there, of this being the final year of his contract, he is going to let it go.
“My head space is pretty much, I don’t really have no worries, or nothing,” he said. “I know what I do when I’m on the field. So I mean, I believe in me. So all that other stuff is going to take care of itself.
“The situation with Washington is different, because it was just a respect thing and situation. I don’t have no worries in Seattle. I’m happy to be in Seattle. And I’ll just play ball. ...
“You just want to feel wanted, at the end of the day. The guys, they made a trade...for me. That’s good enough.
“Now I just hope to repay them in the way I carry myself as a person and as a player.”
Dunbar has an advantage from the first day he gets on the practice field for the Seahawks before the 2020 season, whenever that ends up being amid the pandemic.
Past NFL starters such as Cary Williams, Antoine Winfield, Jamar Taylor have arrived then failed to effectively use let alone master Carroll’s unique step-kick technique for playing cornerback in Seattle. But Dunbar’s been learning that technique for almost a decade, thanks to former Seahawks defensive back Marquand Manuel.
Manuel was a Seahawks defensive back in 2004-05. He started for Seattle in Super Bowl 40 against Pittsburgh but injured his hip and left the game in the second quarter. The Steelers took advantage of Manuel’s replacement, reserve and special-teams player Etric Pruitt, for the game’s biggest plays and won the NFL title with a 21-10 victory that Super Bowl Sunday in Detroit 15 years ago.
After Manuel was done playing he became a defensive-backs coach for Carroll. He taught Seahawks cover guys the step-kick technique in Seattle from 2012-14.
The step-kick requires a cornerback to line up a yard or two directly in front of the receiver and take an immediate step laterally with his outside foot. That’s to buy time; the defender waits almost in place as the receiver does all his shakes and jukes in an attempt to get past the jam.
The “kick” is throwing the foot back, away from the line of scrimmage, to turn and run with the receiver while staying in front of him. It’s counter to the way most cornerbacks learn and play at this elite level of football. Most jamming DBs step into the receiver and attack at the snap. The step laterally, the discipline and the patience to remain neutral with the feet while simultaneously being aggressive with the hands and body at the line of scrimmage are what’s so different about Carroll’s way.
“It’s all about patience,” Dunbar said, echoing Manuel, All-Pro Richard Sherman and other Seahawks cornerbacks of years ago who mastered the technique in Seattle.
Manuel left Carroll’s staff following Seattle’s 2014 Super Bowl season to go with former Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn to Atlanta. He became the Falcons’ secondary coach when Quinn became Atlanta’s head man. Manuel was the Falcons’ defensive coordinator in the 2017 and ‘18 seasons. He is now defensive-backs coach on Doug Pederson’s staff with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Manuel and the 27-year-old Dunbar, 13 years younger, are natives of Miami. They’ve known each other since Dunbar was there in middle school. Dunbar’s high school, Booker T. Washington in Miami’s Overtown area, is 3 miles away from where Manuel went, Miami Senior High School in Little Havana. Both defensive backs played college ball upstate at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
“So I kind of implemented some of those things in my game, years ago,” Dunbar said.
He made an interesting point when talking Thursday about his ability to play multiple positions.
The Seahawks coveted him because he is 6 feet 2 and 202 pounds with 32 5/8-inch arms. That is prototypical, Sherman-like size for a cornerback in Seattle.
Carroll has been looking this offseason for competition and perhaps a new starter at right cornerback opposite Pro Bowl cover man Shaquill Griffin; Griffin’s contract is, like Dunbar’s, ending after the 2020 season. Tre Flowers struggled in his second year converting from college safety to cornerback on the right edge of the Seahawks’ defense in 2019.
Carroll is also looking for competition with last year’s rookie Ugo Amadi as the inside, nickel cornerback covering slot receivers. Amadi is 5-9. The Seahawks want to try longer, taller, bigger options at nickel this year.
Dunbar has been that, too. He did that and more in his first five NFL seasons at Washington.
He was a wide receiver out of the University of Florida. Then Redskins coach Jay Gruden saw him on a punt-coverage drill during a training-camp practice in 2015. The rookie wide receiver was mauling and jamming outside receivers/punt gunners and not letting them get down the field.
Dunbar’s been a defensive back ever since.
“I’m pretty versatile, man,” he said. “In Washington a few years we did it where anyone could become the nickel. You can start out in the outside corner, but then if you man motions to the slot you now become the slot role. So you are playing with the slot, post or dig (routes), zone or man (coverage).
“That kinda, like, messed up the offense because they didn’t know if we were in man or zone. They didn’t know who was the nickel. They could not identify the nickel, because everybody was playing it.
“But predominantly now...they probably don’t want to throw a lot at me, so I am probably going to start out on that right side. And then once I learn that right side, you know, the sky’s the limit.
“I’m just open to contribute, however I can.”
A roving cornerback disguising where he is outside or inside as a nickel would be an attractive change-up for the Seahawks. They could have all three of their cornerbacks with starting experience in the NFL interchange like that: the 6-foot Griffin, 6-2 Dunbar and 6-3 Flowers. That would be one of the league’s bigger, longer trio of coverage cornerbacks, inside and out.
In an NFL so dictated by offenses and defenses trying to exploit and maximize favorable match-ups, that’s big. Literally.
Dunbar said the Seahawks’ defensive cover schemes are indeed changing, away from the as much reliance on “cover three” with a single-arm safety deep in the middle of the field from the Earl Thomas, “Legion of Boom” days. Those ended for good after the 2018 season.
Dunbar’s arrival signals the next step in the Seahawks’ evolution to more varied coverages.
“As I’m going through the defense and visualizing myself I feel like, like I said, it’s a perfect fit,” Dunbar said. “Being around Marquand and things like that, I already got the idea what they ran.
“But they’re not just that anymore. We’re really doing some different things now that It’s not the old Seattle that you expected...
“I like it.”
