Quinton Dunbar gets one-on-one tutoring from Pete Carroll on his first day with Seahawks
Quinton Dunbar stood still. His long arms, the prototype for Seahawks cornerback (yes, longer than 32 inches), were hanging at his side.
Not even five minutes into his first practice for his new team, Dunbar dutifully watched every move coach Pete Carroll was pantomiming a couple feet in front of him. The guru of the step-kick technique unique in today’s NFL was giving his newest, star pupil a VIP lesson. They were alone, one on one. They were between the team’s two practice fields, at least 20 yards away from the rest of the players doing special-teams drills far around them.
Wearing all white, short-sleeves through his usual khakis and Air Monarchs, Carroll jab-stepped to his right. He jab-stepped to his left. He shoved his hands in quick bursts at Dunbar. He was showing him, in rapid fashion, how he wanted receivers pressed off the line of scrimmage.
On his first Seahawks day, the final piece to Seattle’s remade secondary was a watcher. Not yet a difference-maker.
Nine days after prosecutors dropped all armed-robbery charges against him in Florida—five months after Seattle traded with Washington to add what it believes is its new starting cornerback—Dunbar practiced with the Seahawks for the first time Sunday. He passed three COVID-19 tests in his first four days after reporting late to training camp last week. Then he passed a physical exam this weekend before he did position drills in the fourth, no-pads practice of camp.
After Carroll’s tutorial, Dunbar—wearing the jersey number 22 of departed running back C.J. Prosise—walked away to practice the moves against air.
Then he walked up to Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin, All-Pro safety Jamal Adams and Pro Bowl alternate safety Quandre Diggs. They chatted for a couple minutes.
The Seahawks’ new secondary, the successors to the long-gone Legion of Boom, were together for the first time. Dunbar had been in his home in Miami for the three months prosecutors in neighboring Broward County, Florida, contemplated whether to put him on trial for four felony counts of robbery with a firearm. That was stemming from a house party in Miamar, Fla., May 13.
New York Giants cornerback DeAndre Baker, who grew up in Miami with Dunbar, is going to trial in that case. He and Baker had been on the NFL’s commissioner’s exempt list, prohibited from practicing and playing games, until the league reinstated Dunbar last week.
That was the only time they were together on the field Sunday.
Carroll and general manager John Schneider closely watched Dunbar in his first drills, dropping off then moving through the line of scrimmage. Carroll walked 50 yards from Russell Wilson and the offensive drilling on the adjacent field to see Dunbar’s first work.
When the defense came together for group and team drills, Dunbar watched as Tre Flowers continued on as the starting right cornerback opposite Pro Bowl cover man Shaquill Griffin.
Flowers is the 2019 starter Dunbar is (finally) here to replace.
If that doesn’t happen over the next four weeks until the opener Sept. 13 at Atlanta, the trade and one of the key moves to remake Seattle’s pass defense that ranked 26th in the 32-team NFL last season will have failed.
Dunbar is coming off a career-high four interceptions in 11 games last season. He is ultra motivated, too; this is the final year of his contract Seattle inherited from Washington in the trade this spring.
Sunday wasn’t the first time Dunbar had seen the step-kick. He has a head start on Carroll’s press-coverage technique that all other arriving, veteran cornerbacks have not during the coach’s 10 years of demanding its use in Seattle.
Former Seahawks Super Bowl 40 safety Marquand Manuel became Carroll’s defensive backs coach. He taught Seahawks cover guys the step-kick technique in Seattle from 2012-14.
Manuel and the 28-year-old Dunbar, 13 years younger, are natives of Miami. Dunbar’s high school, Booker T. Washington in Miami’s Overtown area, is three miles 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.
“Some of the things that they do in Seattle’s defense I’ve already implemented in my own game, the step-kick and stuff like that,” Dunbar told Seattle’s KIRO-AM radio this spring after the trade. “Because I’ve worked with coaches who have been over there, that I’ve known for a while, since I was a kid.”
“So I kind of implemented some of those things in my game, years ago.”
That’s about to come in very handy.
The Seahawks have just 14 padded practices, beginning Monday, until the season begins against the Falcons. They have no preseason games this month. The coronavirus pandemic canceled those.
So while Dunbar is a week behind his teammates, he’s light years ahead of Cary Williams, Antoine Winfield, Jamar Taylor and other older cornerbacks who have arrived from starting for other teams over the last seven years. All failed to grasp Carroll’s cornerback requirements.
Carroll was an All-Pacific Coast Athletic Conference defensive back at Pacific in 1971 and ’72, and a defensive backs coach starting in 1978 at Iowa State. He was at a Raiders-49ers joint training-camp practice in the early 1980s and saw Oakland Hall of Famer Willie Brown doing the step-kick.
Carroll’s been teaching it ever since. He’s unique in the NFL in doing so.
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.
That’s what Carroll was showing Dunbar at the start of Sunday’s practice.
He has 14 padded practices to get Carroll’s technique down.
Carroll, Schneider, Griffin, Adams and Diggs—all Seahawks—are counting on him doing exactly that.
