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The Cleveland Browns have re-signed offensive lineman Michael Dunn as the offseason program starts on Monday, April 17, according to Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot.
Michael Dunn Was an Unrestricted Free Agent This Offseason
Browns OL Michael Dunn had to practice in a parking lot to prepare to face the Steelers in an emergency start.
He didn’t give up a single pressure all game 😤 @Browns
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In the 2023 offseason, the Cleveland Browns did not place a restricted free agent tender on guard Michael Dunn, so he became an unrestricted free agent. But he ended up re-signing with the Browns; the details of his contract were not made known this time.
Dunn played college football for the University of Maryland and was undrafted coming out of college. He made the practice squad for the Los Angeles Rams in 2017 and then signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars practice squad in 2018. In 2019, he was on the offseason roster for the Miami Dolphins before getting drafted by the XFL’s Seattle Dragons in October 2019, but the XFL suspended operations in April 2020 due to the pandemic.
Dunn then first signed with the Cleveland Browns in August 2020 and joined their practice squad. He went back and forth from the practice squad to being on the active roster for four games in November and December 2020, then was signed to the active roster permanently at the end of the 2020 regular season. He made his first start in the Browns’ playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in January 2021 where he blew everyone away with his play that night.
As The Checkdown wrote on Twitter following the game, “Browns OL Michael Dunn had to practice in a parking lot to prepare to face the Steelers in an emergency start. He didn’t give up a single pressure all game 😤.”
Dunn played in 14 games during the 2021 season and in eight games in the 2022 season before being placed on the injured reserve list with a back injury on November 19, 2022.
Dunn ‘Can’t Wait For What’s Next’ in His NFL Journey
On an Instagram post made during the offseason, Dunn posted a photo of himself playing for the Browns and wrote, “Six years into this journey and wouldn’t change a thing! Can’t wait for what’s next!”
His recent Instagram history shows his enthusiasm for being a member of the Browns.
In January 2021 after the win over the Steelers where he made his first career start, Dunn called it an “unreal experience” and “we want more,” then after the season ended, he wrote, “Amazing year here in Cleveland! So proud to be a part of this team.”
Off the field, Dunn is married to Marissa Morris, a podcast producer for The Athletic. They became engaged in March 2021 on the Maryland campus where they met and were married just under a year later. In August 2021, The Athletic wrote a lengthy feature about the ups and downs they’ve been through, including Dunn bouncing around the NFL and XFL while Morris was battling a rare form of breast cancer and undergoing aggressive surgery to rid her body of the disease.
“It’s amazing to see the person you love and care about follow their dreams through so much adversity and achieve them. So many people would have quit, so many people would have been done. He believed in himself,” said Morris.
Morris was declared cancer-free at the two-and-a-half year mark after her first diagnosis, but in the feature, she gushed about what Dunn did in his first career start against Pittsburgh in the playoffs.
“It was beyond proud,” said Morris. “So many emotions all in one. So many downfalls and setbacks. For him to be on that field and finally doing what he was doing, proving to everybody throughout his career that didn’t necessarily believe in him and didn’t think that he had what it takes to play in that league on that highest level was just unbelievable.”
Dunn told The Athletic that win over the Steelers was almost the fairytale ending of his NFL journey and now it was time to start “the next book.”
“I almost think of it as that’s a wrap for that whole four-year journey, four-year story. It ended with that playoff game. And now let’s get into the next book,” said Dunn.