Quinton Dunbar back to practice, clearing way for him to debut as Seahawks starter Sunday
Quinton Dunbar has cleared his latest hurdle to joining the Seahawks’ starting defense.
Is it his last one?
The new cornerback completed his COVID-19 virus testing protocol to get back into the team facility and onto the practice field Wednesday. That clears the way for Dunbar to start opposite Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin against Matt Ryan, Julio Jones and the Falcons on Sunday in the season opener at Atlanta.
The Seahawks didn’t trade with Washington in March to get him when he was coming off the best season of his career and entering his contract year to have him watch Tre Flowers play that position instead.
“He’s here and he’s ready to go today. Full speed,” coach Pete Carroll said before Wednesday’s practice.
Carroll and the Seahawks will continue to state the competition continues between Dunbar and Flowers for the right-cornerback job. That’s part of the competitive advantage of uncertainty with opponents coaches like to try to keep heading into games. The team’s public-relations department issued a week-one depth chart on Tuesday, an unofficial one, while Dunbar was still in COVID-19 testing protocol. That listed the starter at cornerback this week as either Flowers or Dunbar.
Flowers was the Oklahoma State safety Carroll drafted in 2018 and converted into a 6-foot-3 cornerback to fit the coach’s prototype of long, tall cover guys on the outside. Flowers has started his first two NFL seasons for Seattle.
He was starting the first weeks of training camp last month, too. That was while the 6-2 Dunbar was in Florida awaiting a decision from prosecutors there on whether he would go on trial for felony armed robbery.
The Broward County State Attorney decided last month to drop all charges against Dunbar. The NFL took him off the commissioner’s exempt list, and he practiced for the first time with the Seahawks Aug. 16.
For two weeks he stayed behind Flowers in the starting defense—joining it in nickel, five-defensive back alignments in red-zone scrimmages only—until Aug. 31. That was the day Flowers missed practice with a sprained ankle. Dunbar took over as the full-time right cornerback that day. He stayed there upon Flowers’ return Sept. 1 through the new month’s first week.
Last week Carroll excused Dunbar to go back to Florida for a funeral. He missed Thursday’s and Monday’s practices (the players were off Friday through Sunday). Flowers was back with the starters for those practices, the second one while Dunbar went through three days of COVID-19 testing to get back into the team’s regular protocol.
Asked late last month what he needed to catch up on in the defense, Dunbar said: “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.”
Carroll was asked Wednesday if Dunbar missing the first week of training-camp practices, and now two more, puts his new cornerback behind in seizing the job he’s here to take.
“He’s a really bright kid,” Carroll said. “Picking up the system has been nothing for him, it’s been really easy. He’s had good, competitive work. ...He’s missed enough days that he hasn’t got them all, and you can tell, a little bit.
“But because of the savvy player that he is, the experience that he has, we would be comfortable if he is on the field playing for us.”
Carroll has been raving for weeks about Dunbar’s fit in Seattle’s defense.
“This is a really unique football player, Quinton Dunbar. He’s got terrific awareness,” Carroll said last month. “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.”
Barring yet another roadblock for a man who’s put himself through many since his trade to Seattle, Dunbar is on track to join Griffin, All-Pro safety Jamal Adams and veteran free safety Quandre Diggs in the Seahawks’ remade starting secondary in Atlanta.
What other possible roadblock?
The New York Daily News reported Tuesday the Broward County State Attorney’s office released to it what the Daily News called “new evidence” in the robbery case. A key witness says Dunbar participated in the robberies of four people of jewelry and cash at a house party in Miramar, Florida, May 13, and that Dunbar directed former New York Giants cornerback DeAndre Baker to do the actual robbing at gun point.
Baker is facing the trial Dunbar avoided. The Giants released him this week.
Dunbar acknowledged the NFL could still suspend him for games this season. Commissioner Roger Goodell has that latitude per the league’s personal-conduct policy. Goodell has suspended players after NFL investigations separate from law-enforcement and prosecutors’ investigations, including in cases without charges filed against a player.
That’s why Seahawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed got suspended for the first six games of the 2019 season, even though prosecutors in Bellevue declined to charge Reed in an alleged domestic-violence incident years earlier at his home there.
“I mean, that’s definitely a possibility,” Dunbar said last month of an NFL suspension. “The league is run by the league, so, I mean, who knows? I’m not saying it’s not going to happen. I’m not saying it is going to happen … who knows?
“It’s a possibility, though.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2020 at 3:51 PM.
