While Quinton Dunbar faces trouble, Seahawks competitor Tre Flowers grinds
New Seahawk Quinton Dunbar is out of jail but restricted to Florida. He is awaiting a prosecutor’s decision on whether to put him on trial.
The guy whose job Dunbar was planning to take with Seattle this year? He is branching out.
Tre Flowers is working out on his own in homemade training against eager receivers—who answered the Seahawks cornerback’s call to train on Twitter.
Only in a pandemic.
Flowers went on the social-media platform this week and asked anyone with a keypad, thumbs and a social-media account to come to a high school field in his hometown of San Antonio the next afternoon for a workout. That’s OK in Texas, which this week began to reopen more quickly than many states from the COVID-19 virus.
At least a dozen guys took him up on his unique Twitter offer.
At least one college quarterback and a half-dozen or more receivers joined Flowers for the Twitter-facilitated workout on a clear, sunny day in San Antonio. Wearing an Oklahoma State defense workout shirt and orange gloves from his days of college ball that ended when Seattle drafted him in 2018, Flowers did what he can’t do right now against Seahawks receivers in the minicamps and organized team activities that have been canceled.
He got on-field work.
The amount of work surprised him.
“All the retweets, all the replies, I wasn’t really expecting it,” Flowers told San Antonio-based reporter Greg Sherman just off the field at his workout.
“It shows that this city’s growing, and they want to play ball. So, I love it.”
One of the players who took Flowers up on his offer and met him at the field was Frank Harris, who is intending to battle this summer for the starting quarterback job at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Harris went to Clemens High School in Schertz, just outside San Antonio.
“We kind of grew up together. My sister and his sister played basketball together, so I’ve been knowing him for a very long time,” Harris told Sherman at the workout. “When he’s down here, we always try to get together and get some work in.”
Harris’ scouting report on Flowers: “He’s real fast. And he covers really well.
“You are not going to be open, a receiver’s not going to be open very long, going against him, because he’s so long. It’s ridiculous.
“That’s why it’s good to come out here. You are not going to see too many guys who are built like him, and who are in the NFL...”
The 6-foot-3 Flowers struggled last season, his second one of coach Pete Carroll converting him from Oklahoma State safety to long Seahawks cornerback. Opposing play callers and quarterbacks targeted Flowers on the opposite side of Seattle Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin. And they often succeeded. Aaron Rodgers and the Packers were particularly successful going at Flowers on the right, outside edge of the Seahawks’ secondary in Green Bay’s playoff win in January.
In the weeks following that game, Carroll and general manager John Schneider sought to find new competition for Flowers, to make him and the coverage and thus the entire defense better in 2020. That’s why they traded a fifth-round draft choice to Washington in March, to acquire Dunbar.
Dunbar confirmed last week the Seahawks are going to start him out playing on the right side at cornerback. Flowers’ spot.
The same day Dunbar said that, on a Zoom online call from his home in Florida, police in nearby Miramar got a Broward County judge to issue an arrest warrant for Dunbar on four felony counts of armed robbery. After a bond hearing Sunday, prosecutors are now in the process of deciding whether to proceed with a formal arraignment and trial.
Depending on whether Dunbar stands trial and for how long, Flowers may have gained a renewed foothold at the right-cornerback job.
He was showing swagger with the guys who took him up on his Twitter offer for a workout in San Antonio this week. He was woofin’ across the line at the receivers, mostly younger, who lined up to run pass routes against him.
“I’m going to bring my chippiness everywhere I go,” Flowers told reporter Sherman in San Antonio. “I want them to be competitive and talk back to me, because it is only going to make them better.
After two years in Carroll’s system, Flowers is starting to talk like his Seahawks coach. Even 2,100 miles from Seattle.
“As long as we are out here competing, I want to make it a competitive atmosphere,” Flowers said. “Just to get everybody together and see their faces, it’s all fun.
“At the end of the day, everybody loves football. ...
“Any nuggets (of information) I can give them I will give them. I’m not going to hold anything back. The Seahawks taught me, ‘each one, teach one.’
“So I’m going to bring it back to everyone I can.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
