Door now wide open for Quinton Dunbar to seize starting cornerback job for Seahawks opener
Quinton Dunbar’s August hasn’t just been good.
It’s been life-saving.
Four weeks ago, Dunbar was staring at the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors in Broward County, Florida, were deciding how to proceed with four felony charges against him for robbery with a firearm, in a bizarre case stemming from a house party he attended in May.
“When you are facing armed robbery, man, that carries life in Florida,” Dunbar said this month.
“It’s just a hard pill to swallow.”
Now, two weeks after his first practice with the Seahawks, the 28-year-old is poised to finally seize the Seahawks’ starting right-cornerback job the team acquired him to win.
The door opened fully for Dunbar for the first time on Sunday. Tre Flowers, Seattle’s starter the last two seasons, missed practice with what coach Pete Carroll said was “a slightly sprained ankle.” The Seahawks traded a fifth-round draft choice to Washington in March to acquire Dunbar with the intent of having him replace Flowers in their remade secondary for 2020.
The 6-foot-2, 202-pound Dunbar had been doing some limited first-team work for a week or so, as the right cornerack specifically in red-zone drills. Sunday was the first time it was Dunbar full time on the first-team defense in all scrimmage situations. He was opposite Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin. Recently acquired All-Pro Jamal Adams and Pro Bowl alternate Quandre Diggs were the safeties in a 90-minute team scrimmage, the team’s last, full scrimmage before the opener Sept. 13 at Atlanta.
Finally, three practice before the first regular-season game week, the Seahawks had the lineup they’ve been envisioning on the field together.
Finally—after two trades, plus three months of sticking with Dunbar through his legal danger across the country that ended Aug. 7. The prosecutors in Florida decided to drop all charges against him.
Carroll sounded beyond pleased with the long-limbed, smooth-running Dunbar joining his top crew, pressing receivers on the line and running with them in the style and technique Carroll demands of his cornerbacks.
“It’s really important for me to see this film (from Sunday’s practice),” Carroll said. “We had some one-on-ones, and he played with the first group. ...
“This is a really unique football player, Quinton Dunbar. He’s got terrific awareness. He’s got size and speed and all that kind of stuff, so he can do the things we need our corners to do. But he has terrific awareness. He’s got very good spatial awareness and play-making ability and a really good, challenge attitude.
“I really like the way he plays.”
Now Carroll and his defensive coaches need to see more of Dunbar running with the ones in their system. His first practice with Seattle was Aug. 16. He’s had just 11 practices with his new team.
“We don’t have a lot of work done with him at this point,” Carroll said. “So, we’ve got a couple more weeks and the competition will continue. But he’s made nothing but positive steps toward play time.
“I really like his savvy and awareness. So he just...makes us better. We always like to see that tall guy over there on that right side. We’ve seen that for a lot of years. He certainly can fill that.”
Put another way: The Seahawks didn’t trade with Washington in March to get Dunbar to have him sit on the bench. Not with him coming off a career season in D.C. And not with Dunbar now beginning the final season of his contract.
Flowers’ fall
The ankle injury isn’t what got Flowers in imminent danger of losing his job.
Last season was the second one since Carroll drafted Flowers in the fifth round and converted the former safety at Oklahoma State into Seattle’s starting cornerback the last two years. Trends they saw through the final game of last season pushed Carroll and general manager John Schneider to make the trade for Dunbar.
Flowers had promising moments last season, times it was apparent why Carroll turned the 6-3 college safety into one of his prototypical, long cornerbacks. But at other time last season Flowers became a target for opponents to exploit.
Offenses generally avoided Griffin’s left side in 2019. Griffin was on the field for 633 coverage snaps last season. Quarterbacks targeted him only 70 times, on just 11% of all pass plays. They threw more at Flowers and in the middle of Seattle’s defense, particularly at a series of nickel backs the Seahawks tried last year.
Seattle, once the home of the “Legion of Boom,” sunk to 26th in the NFL in pass defense.
The last game was the last straw.
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers followed the league trend in the NFC divisional playoff game at Green Bay in January. He mostly stayed away Griffin and picked on Flowers—starting with his first pass of the game. The Packers’ first snap was a sharp crossing route on which Davante Adams easily beat Flowers across the field for a 14-yard gain.
Three of Green Bay’s first five throws were at Flowers. The third of those passes was Rodgers’ 20-yard touchdown pass to Adams. Adams was split wide left just outside fellow Packers receiver Geronimo Allison. They faked a switch route of X-ing with each other. Flowers, who started head up on Adams, and Seahawks nickel back Ugo Amadi got turned around each other on the fake. Flowers initially went inside, as if expecting Adams to continue there. Amadi stepped inside, too. No Seahawk was within 5 yards of Adams when he stayed outside instead and cut to the goal-line pylon. The Packers led 7-0 within the game’s first five snaps.
Green Bay went up 28-10 midway through the third quarter and put Russell Wilson and Seattle’s offense in desperation mode when Adams again turned Flowers around. That was for a 40-yard touchdown catch.
After Wilson frantically rallied the Seahawks to within 28-23 with 9 minutes left, Green Bay had a third and 10. The Packers sent Allison on another crossing route at Flowers. The cornerback could not keep up. Rodgers’ completion for 12 yards extended the drive. It was one of many key third downs late that finally ended Seattle’s season.
In all, the Packers completed four of six passes targeting Flowers specifically, for 86 yards. Both of Rodgers’ touchdown passes and the key first down late were at Flowers. Adams romped for 160 yards on eight receptions on that cold night at Lambeau Field.
It was coldest for Flowers. Two months later, the Seahawks traded for Dunbar.
“I feel like he was more productive last year than people like to bring up,” Griffin said of Flowers. “But when you leave a game, the last game of the season, you leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, so I totally understand.
“Because the main thing people say about Tre is, ‘the last game. Green Bay.’ That’s the first thing everybody brings up.”
Griffin shrugged. He said it has motivated Flowers to bounce back in 2020.
What’s next
Whether or not Flowers comes back from his sprained ankle, Seattle’s practices Tuesday (after the players’ day off Monday), Wednesday and Thursday will be as important for Dunbar as for any Seahawk.
They will to confirm his place in the starting defense he first took on Sunday.
Dunbar has been scrambling since he got to Seattle three weeks ago. He didn’t have the offseason practices that NFL players traded in March usually get before a normal training camp begins in late July. On court order by the agreement of his bond release from jail, he stayed in Florida from mid-May to mid-July. He wouldn’t have been able to practice with his Seahawks and team headquarters in Renton, anyway. The coronavirus pandemic closed NFL teams’ facilities from March until training camps began four weeks ago, wiping out all teams’ minicamps and organized team activities.
Asked what he needs to catch up on, Dunbar said: “Everything, man.
“I mean, everything.
“Football is a game of reps, physically and mentally. And not having OTAs and those things, and to come in here late, and being in a new defense, it’s nothing like going out there and getting the reps and understanding the defense from a fast-paced standpoint, and being out there knowing what you can do and knowing what you can’t do.
“So I’ve got a long way to go.”
But not as long as every other veteran Carroll has acquired to play cornerback in Seattle.
The coach and former defensive back remarked again Sunday how Dunbar is ahead in his learning Carroll’s step-kick technique. He’d been taught it before this month.
Dunbar has been drilling for years in offseasons with 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 in their a 21-10 victory in that Super Bowl 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.
Manuel and Dunbar, 13 years younger, are natives of Miami. 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 upstate at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
“He’s come in here with all of our terminology and technique in hand,” Carroll said. “He’s already been coached exactly like our guys have been coached. I didn’t know that when I went after him. ...
“It’s accelerated his sense of comfort with us.”
For as far as he’s come this last month, Dunbar’s not fully comfortable in the Seahawks defense, nor necessarily with taking Flowers’ job right now.
“I’m not here to flex, or anything like that,” he said.
“I’m just here to win.”
Roster move
Still concerned with depth a wide receiver because of injuries to Phillip Dorsett, John Ursua and Cody Thompson, the Seahawks signed former Cowboys wide receiver Lance Lenoir Monday.
They signed back 2014 draft choice Paul Richardson Sunday.
Lenior played in eight games in 2018 for Dallas, mostly on special teams. He was on its injured-reserve list last season.
The Seahawks waived undrafted rookie running back Patrick Carr with an injury designation to make roster room for Lenoir.
This story was originally published August 31, 2020 at 1:51 PM.
