BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. — After a most bizarre case had him back in Florida for the start of training camp, the Seahawks are finally getting their new cornerback.
A league source confirmed to The News Tribune Saturday the NFL has decided to reinstate Dunbar from the commissioner’s exempt list. The decision comes one day after prosecutors in Broward County, Fla., dropped all criminal charges against him for alleged armed robbery at a house party in May.
Dunbar’s Miami-based lawyer, Andrew Rier, told The News Tribune on Friday Dunbar was still in Miami and had yet to report to Seahawks training camp in Renton.
He can report now. The source told the TNT the Seahawks expect him to be on a plane to Seattle as soon as this weekend.
Saturday’s reinstatement clears the way for Dunbar to go onto the 80-man preseason roster within the next couple days. He can then begin COVID-19 virus testing protocols in the parking lot outside the team facility on the day he reports, perhaps as soon as Sunday. He then will take another COVID test Monday and a third one Wednesday.
If Dunbar passes all three of those tests he would be allowed into the team building for the first time since his trade from Washington this offseason, and presumably onto the field for conditioning workouts.
The Seahawks have been having those all this week. Seattle’s first non-padded practice is scheduled for Wednesday. Those no-pads workouts are slated to continue Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
The first day the league is allowing practices in full pads is Aug. 17. Each team gets 14 padded practices before the season begins, which for Seattle is Sept. 13 at Atlanta.
The league put Dunbar on the exempt list July 27. That was after unexpected turns, accusations of victims being bribed, lawyers dropping out and more in his unusual felony case for robbery with a firearm. While on the commissioner’s exempt list Dunbar was prohibited from practicing with the Seahawks or attending games.
But Friday, Michael J. Satz, state attorney for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, wrote in a statement released by the Broward State Attorney’s Office: “Broward prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against the other NFL player who was arrested in relation to this incident, Quinton Dunbar, 28, due to insufficient evidence.”
Co-defendant DeAndre Baker, a cornerback for the New York Giants from Dunbar’s hometown of Miami, was formally charged with four counts of robbery with a firearm. He is accused of stealing cash and watched from four men at a party in Miramar, Fla., May 13.
Baker will go to trial.
Dunbar will not.
Dunbar’s attorney, Andrew Rier, told The News Tribune Friday Dunbar was still in Miami. He was awaiting the NFL taking him off the exempt list. Rier said he and Dunbar expect that to happen “soon.”
It did. Very soon after.
“I’m extremely happy,” Rier told the TNT. “I think the Broward County prosecutors did the right thing in dropping the charges against Mr. Dunbar. I can’t wait to root for him on the football field this fall.”
The NFL could still discipline Dunbar as part of its own investigation under the league’s personal-conduct policy. It doesn’t need a criminal verdict or even a charge against a player to do that. But the NFL would have to uncover a load of information against Dunbar that Florida’s law-enforcement and judicial systems have not.
Suddenly, the Seahawks’ secondary and defense looks stronger than it did before this weekend.
Dunbar is coming off a career year with Washington, before his trade to Seattle this offseason. The Seahawks traded for him expecting him to replace Tre Flowers, who struggled at cornerback in 2019, his second year converting from college safety.
Now that he begin practicing soon, Dunbar should become the starter opposite Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin.
Seattle’s safeties are Quandre Diggs, a Pro Bowl alternate last season after his trade from Detroit in October, and All-Pro Jamal Adams. Seattle traded two first-round picks and veteran starter Bradley McDougald to the New York Jets to acquire Adams, 24, last month.
The 6-foot-3 Flowers could become an option as a bigger, rangier nickel defense back inside against taller receivers in a three-cornerback arrangement, depending on matchups this season.
Dunbar and Griffin are entering the final seasons of their contracts.
Dunbar entered pleas of not guilty to all four charges of armed robbery in Broward County May 17. He was released on $100,000 bond with the stipulation he stay in Florida while awaiting trial. The court hearing his and Baker’s case recently granted Dunbar permission to leave his native state to participate in the early parts of Seahawks training camp.
A few days after his release from jail in May Dunbar rejoined the Seahawks’ virtual offseason training sessions online from Florida. He was on those calls through them ending in late June.
“He’s been very open with the discussions of what’s taken place, and the whole process going on,” coach Pete Carroll said of Dunbar June 11.
Just about everything surrounding this case, including Friday’s news, has a surprise.
In mid-May, days after the four people were allegedly robbed of cash and jewelry at a house party at Miramar during the coronavirus pandemic, Miami attorney Michael Grieco told The News Tribune and then a judge in Dunbar’s bond hearing that Dunbar was at the party in question. But Grieco said Dunbar has been a victim of young people at the party who initially made up stories to police about the involvement of a wealthy, young NFL player in the robbery of expensive watches and cash—and that Dunbar has been a victim of “amateur-hour” work by the police department that created the arrest warrant for four alleged felonies against the Seahawks player.
Grieco produced affidavits he said he gave prosecutors and police in Florida affidavits from five victims and witnesses that recanted what they told detectives about the Dunbar’s involvement in an armed robbery.
“The victims—the alleged victims—have completely recanted, on paper, sworn, their stories,” Grieco said in May.
After Dunbar posted $100,000 bond and was released from jail, prosecutors spent months deciding whether to proceed with a trial against Dunbar and Baker.
During that time, early last month, the New York Daily News cited warrants obtained from public-records requests that said a witness oversaw four victims allegedly get paid in Grieco’s Miami office to recant the statements they had made to police that Dunbar was involved in the armed robbery of them.
That news broke a day after Dunbar hired a second attorney to defend him, Fort Lauderdale-based Michael D. Weinstein.
Within days of the Daily News’ report, Dunbar changed lawyers. The Florida bar reportedly was investigating Grieco. About the only truths of the case were that Dunbar was indeed at the party in question in May, and that his first name was Quinton.
Everything else was being disputed. A trial to determine the truth seemed imminent and assured.
Then came Friday’s decision by state prosecutors to drop all criminal charges against Dunbar. And Saturday’s decision by the league that Dunbar could finally, fully become a Seahawk in training camp.
“I think they came to the right conclusion,” Rier said.
“Mr. Dunbar did nothing wrong.”
Cox Media Group
