After missing out on the Stephon Gilmore sweepstakes the Green Bay Packers needed to, at the very least, add depth to their cornerback room.
Quinton Dunbar was signed to the practice squad this week to do just that. Dunbar has a history with defensive coordinator Joe Barry, as the two spent time together in Washington. In his first opportunity to speak to the media since acquiring Dunbar, Barry couldn’t help himself. “Am I on a clock here? Do I have plenty of time?” Barry quipped “Alright, Quinton Dunbar, an unbelievable story…”
For context Barry noted that “Quinton was touted when he came out of high school as one of the top wide receivers in the country. I think back then they were actually even saying he was the Odell Beckham. Coming out of high school, he was the man.” Unfortunately, Dunbar’s college career didn’t live up to Beckham’s and according to Barry that put him in the “right place at the right time” and led directly to this story:
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.
Quinton Dunbar certainly isn’t the cornerback that Packers’ fans wanted but stories like this are exactly why we love sports. Any organization in the league should be thrilled to have someone with the drive and mentality of Dunbar. Hopefully he makes it onto the field for the Packers and can make a difference in 2021.
