Getty Quinton Dunbar #47 of the Washington Football Team reacts after making a tackle for loss in the first quarter of a game against the San Francisco 49ers at FedEx Field on October 15, 2017 in Landover, Maryland.
The Green Bay Packers added an experienced cornerback to their ranks earlier this week when they signed Quinton Dunbar to their practice squad. For defensive coordinator Joe Barry, though, it brings back memories of the “unbelievable” story that shaped the course of Dunbar’s NFL career.
Barry got the opportunity to discuss Dunbar’s arrival in Green Bay for the first time ahead of their Week 6 trip to face the Chicago Bears and made no attempts to hide the way he feels about the veteran cornerback when a reporter asked him what Dunbar had been like during their two seasons together for the Washington Football Team.
“Am I on a clock here? Do I have plenty of time?” Barry asked the Packers’ media team while addressing reporters on October 14. “Alright, Quinton Dunbar, an unbelievable story …”
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Dunbar Was in ‘Right Place at Right Time”
When Dunbar came into the league as an undrafted rookie in 2015, Barry had no expectations for him as a defensive player. That’s because, back then, Dunbar was still classified as a wide receiver for the Washington Football Team.
“Quinton was touted when he came out of high school as one of the top wide receivers in the country,” Barry explained. “I think back then they were actually even saying he was the Odell Beckham. Coming out of high school, he was the man.”
Dunbar didn’t quite live up to the same reputation at the college level, but he still delivered a solid career at Florida against SEC competition with 111 career receptions for 1,500 yards and eight touchdowns over four seasons. It was enough to earn him an opportunity as a “camp body” for Washington in a deep group of wideouts during the 2015 preseason. As Barry tells it, it also put Dunbar in the “right place at the right time.”
Here’s the story Barry told:
So, we sign him as an undrafted wideout, comes in and, quite frankly to be honest with you, he was a 90-man roster, just a camp body. We signed 16 wideouts for camp just to play in the fourth quarter of preseason games. So we’re going through training camp and that year we had a joint practice against the Houston Texans and we had three days of practice against them and it was the third day. … We had a couple injuries and I want to say we only had three or four corners to go into practice. And this was a joint practice against another team, so it wasn’t like we could postpone practice. So, we’re like, ‘What are we going to do? We’ve got three corners!’ And I’ll never forget, Dunny was wearing … No. 17, that was his jersey number and I didn’t even know his name. In the staff meeting, we were like, ‘What about that Dunbar guy, could we just throw him in just to get through practice?’ And I’m like, ‘No. 17, are you kidding me?’ And we’re like, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something.’ So that is how Quinton Dunbar became an NFL corner, and that was 2015, which, moving forward from that day, he never played another snap of wideout. We officially moved him to corner, and he’s got the skillset: He’s tall, he’s long, he can run obviously, so we converted him that day. I can’t remember that year if he made it on the active roster or not … but then the next year in ’16, he made our active roster and played.
Again, I share that story with you guys because the job that I have, the role that I’m in to be able to witness things like that firsthand because that’s … this guy was a down-the-line, training-camp (guy). He was going to get cut and probably never make it, and bam, he was able to be in the right place at the right time. At that moment, we moved him and he’s put together a pretty nice career.
Length Remains Asset for Dunbar
Barry didn’t last long enough in Washington to see how Dunbar would continue to grow as a cornerback, getting dismissed from his post following the 2016 season. The converted cornerback, however, improved steadily over his next three seasons with the height of his time with the team coming in 2019 when he recorded a career-high four interceptions and eight pass breakups over 11 starts.
In the 58 career games since Barry and his Washington staff converted Dunbar to cornerback, he has collected a combined 180 tackles, 40 pass deflections and 10 interceptions. He has also picked off at least one pass in each of his six NFL seasons, including his six-game stint with the Seattle Seahawks in 2020.
“Arm length is a big thing,” Barry said of Dunbar. “You can’t coach length. You either have length or you don’t, and Dunny has that. He has the size, he has the length, obviously he has the athleticism and the speed being an SEC wideout. But that was probably the biggest thing was we saw the athleticism and the length that he’s really been able to use that in his career as a corner now.”
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