‘I have a confession to make’: One couple’s roller-coaster ride on the NFL fringe

It’s the Cleveland Browns’ first playoff game in 18 years and no one can believe what’s happening. Playing in Heinz Field against a Pittsburgh Steelers team that has dominated them for the better part of eternity, the Browns are without their head coach and their Pro Bowl left guard. They haven’t really practiced as a team all week. Yet somehow they’re winning 28-0, and it’s only the first quarter.

In the stands, Marissa Morris’ phone is blowing up. Friends, family members, acquaintances she hasn’t spoken to in years — they’re all texting her exclamation points because this is just too crazy. They know how much it means to her.

Finally, she decides it’s time to come clean.

She thumbs out a message to Zac Jackson and Jason Lloyd, who cover the Browns for The Athletic. Their podcast “Civilized Barking” is one of several Morris produces.

“I have a huge confession to make,” she writes. “Michael Dunn is my boyfriend.”

Michael and Marissa first met when they were freshmen at the University of Maryland.

“We didn’t start dating until Michael’s senior year (in 2016),” she says over Zoom while sitting next to Michael inside her mom’s house in New Jersey. “Well, the end of my senior year and the start of Michael’s redshirt senior year. It was like May, right before graduation. Or no, we started in September —”

“I’ll take over,” says Michael.

Dunn originally joined the Maryland football team as a walk-on. Today, he’s 6 feet, 5 inches tall, 307 pounds. Then, he was about 80 pounds lighter. By the time his redshirt senior season came around, he was nearing 50 career starts and had his sights set on playing in the NFL.

That fall, Marissa drove down nearly every weekend from New York, where she was a news producer at PIX11. Cupcakes in tow for Dunn and the bale of teammates he lived with, she went to nearly every game. Marissa’s mom, Lisa Murray, knew right away it was serious.

“I thought this girl was allergic to the kitchen,” Murray says. “It was hysterical. Who does she think she’s fooling?”

Dunn’s NFL prospects changed when he caught the first pass of his college career on the aptly named “River Dunn” trick play. With one defensive back standing between him and the end zone, he attempted a stiff-arm and jammed his shoulder into the ground so hard he tore his labrum. He ended up missing just one game, but his decision to play through the pain and postpone surgery until after the season unwittingly torpedoed his draft stock. As a likely late-round pick, he fell out of the 2017 draft entirely.

It wasn’t until June that the Los Angeles Rams gave him a spot on their 90-man roster for training camp. He was buried on the depth chart as the third-team right tackle.

From afar, Marissa was investigating. Now working for MLB.com producing some of its digital shows and podcasts, she put her journalism background to work combing through social media for any sign of an update on Michael. She’d notice the offensive line running sprints on the live stream of practice and ask what happened. She was the journalist pestering him with questions.

“And I’m like, ‘Good. Yeah. Uh-huh. Fine,’ says Dunn. “Like, Marissa, it’s 9 p.m., I have to be up in like five hours.”

Marissa flew out for Dunn’s disastrous first preseason game. He played only a handful of snaps, committed a holding penalty and was too nervous to perform at his best.

The Rams released Dunn during roster cutdowns but immediately signed him to the practice squad. Then he was cut two days later.

Dunn moved in with Marissa and her mom that fall while he waited and hoped for more opportunities. He worked out for the Bills at one point and was told the Rams were still fond of him, but nothing materialized. Marissa was grieving the recent loss of her maternal grandmother and logging long hours in New York City. Meanwhile, Michael spent his days working out, playing backgammon with Murray and serving as the taste tester for dinner every night.

“She’s the planner, and I’m legit living in their household, not making any money,” Dunn says. “It didn’t even look like I was heading toward a job. It was like I’m working out just to work out at this point. So she’d be asking ‘What’s next?’ And I was just like, ‘I don’t know. Let’s let this ride out a little bit.’ And she was very supportive of that.”

His next chance came the following February when the Rams signed him again. This time, he’d have a full offseason to learn the playbook and a fully healed shoulder. He was also playing guard, which was a better fit given his stature.

Then the Rams drafted three offensive linemen and Dunn was released in June.

That summer, Dunn resolved that if he didn’t end up in training camp with an NFL team, he would be done with football. Or rather, he would accept that football was done with him.

Two days into camp, the Jaguars signed him. There, he made an impression on offensive line coach Pat Flaherty, who appreciated that Dunn never had to be taught something twice.

“He kind of grows on you,” Flaherty says.

Once again, Dunn was released during final cutdowns. Once again, he was signed to the practice squad. He moved into an apartment close to the Jaguars facility and excitedly sent Marissa videos of the place. A big man needs a big bed, so he replaced the queen-size bed with a king. Then the Jaguars cut him in October, which is when he learned one of the cardinal rules of life on the bubble: never commit to a long-term lease. After some haggling with the apartment complex, he handed it all over to the guy who took his job.

A month later, the Jaguars brought him back to the practice squad. This time, he stayed in a hotel. He felt himself making strides under Flaherty’s tutelage. Then three things happened on the Jaguars’ locker cleanout day on Dec. 31, 2018. First, Dunn was told the team was letting him go. Second, Flaherty was fired. Third, his agent pushed him to consider signing with the upstart Alliance of American Football.

When he called Marissa from the airport to break the news, it felt like rock bottom.

Michael Dunn during a game between the Birmingham Iron and the San Diego Fleet. (Justin Fine / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

On Jan. 5, 2019, Marissa found out she had breast cancer.

More specifically, she had a malignant phyllodes tumor. Phyllodes tumors account for about 1 percent of all breast cancers, which meant Marissa needed to find a specialist for what came next — a bilateral mastectomy. If everything went well, her body would be fully rid of the disease and she’d be no more susceptible to future cancer than anyone else her age. But time was of the essence.

Obviously, Michael’s AAF dilemma took a backseat. He wanted to stay with her in New Jersey, but Marissa insisted he report to training camp with the league’s Birmingham Iron. She had her mom and the all-encompassing buoy of an extended family with 21 cousins within a few miles. She also figured she could use the distraction.

After a truncated tour of the area’s top hospitals, Marissa found the perfect fit at Johns Hopkins, where her would-be doctor had recently published a paper on phyllodes tumors.

On Jan. 31, she underwent successful surgery. Hours later and still in the loopy post-operation haze, she was on the phone with Michael. Everything went well and she was feeling good. Did he want to FaceTime? No? Why not? Oh, you’re going to play video games with your teammates? So can we FaceTime now before you go? Where are you anyway? Hold on, let me check your location. Wait a second, are you at the airport? Why are you at the airport?

Michael, of course, was flying in to surprise her. He just underestimated her abilities as an investigator.

It’s trite to say the months that followed were difficult. To say nothing of the emotional toll, her body was healing. Marissa was tethered to drips on both sides of her body. Her chest was sore and her body weak. During the surgery, expanders were inserted to prepare her body for the reconstructive surgeries that would follow. That meant that every day she dealt with the pain of her skin expanding. She had her mom by her side at every turn serving as a de facto nurse and her extended family providing emotional support, more nursing help and lots and lots of meals.

Marissa gets emotional when talking about that time because of what everyone around her went through. She talks about the burden her mom carried throughout the ordeal and how hard it must have been for Michael to feel so helpless from a distance.

But Marissa was right. The AAF was a nice distraction.

“I remember your first game,” Marissa says. “I still had drains in me. I barely could do anything. We all were watching —”

“I wasn’t even starting.”

“Yeah, he didn’t start.”

Before that game, Dunn told Marissa he was going to quit if he didn’t play. The whole point was to catch the attention of an NFL team, and that wasn’t going to happen from the bench. He ended up replacing an injured player midway through the first game, then started every subsequent game while shifting across different positions and showcasing the coveted versatility needed for a backup offensive lineman.

He and Marissa found ways to stay connected from a distance. Sometimes, that meant Marissa sending Michael sudoku for him to print out so they could race to see who could finish first. It also meant long film sessions. Dunn is obsessive about re-watching his performance, but there were no tablets for players in the AAF like there are in the NFL. Instead, Marissa would DVR the games so Michael could later watch over FaceTime while asking her to pause. Stop there. Rewind. A little further.

In late March, Marissa was cleared to travel. Nervous and still very weak, she checked her bags so there was nothing to carry onto the plane. She made it to Birmingham excited to see Michael and watch him play in person for the first time in a while. A day or two after the game, Michael booked Marissa a massage. Within that hour of relaxation, the league folded.

“I was honestly happy,” she says, “because he got what he wanted out of this with film, playing multiple positions.”

Back at his second home in New Jersey, Dunn could now accompany Marissa and her mom on Marissa’s follow-up visits to Johns Hopkins. A few days after the AAF shut down, the three of them were in the parking lot outside the hospital when Dunn got a text from Flaherty, his former position coach with the Jaguars who was now with the Miami Dolphins.

Michael had a new job.

Year 3 didn’t turn out to be special. A few days into Dolphins training camp, Flaherty was fired, leaving Dunn without his most vocal supporter in the organization. He was released during roster cutdowns and, this time, there was no practice squad.

Miami was nice though. And because Marissa’s new job with The Athletic allowed her to work from anywhere, they posted up in Florida for a couple of months. Once again, it looked like the NFL was probably finished with Dunn. But no one was worried about the future.

“My perspective on a lot of this stuff changed,” Marissa says, her voice cracking. “I wasn’t as much ‘What’s next?’ With everything we went through, I was like, ‘It’ll figure itself out.’ I went from being a super-planner to, ‘There’s more important things than football.'”

Enter the XFL. At first, Dunn scoffed at the idea of playing in another upstart league. He was even less enthusiastic when the Seattle Dragons selected him in the sixth round of the league’s draft … for offensive linemen. Eventually, he relented and quickly won a starting job. After five games, one of Dunn’s teammates tested positive for COVID-19 and the league halted operations. A slew of XFL players quickly signed with NFL teams that spring, but no one called Dunn.

He prepared for the inevitable. An econ major and three-time all-academic Big Ten member at Maryland, he took online classes and earned a certificate in business management. The house in New Jersey was a typical quarantine scene. In the garage, there was Michael working out in what he had refashioned into a personal gym. Marissa’s stepfather was on the phone in his basement office running his printing business. Murray was in the dining room conducting remote gym class with her elementary school students in her 38th year as a teacher. And on the second floor, Marissa was planning, recording, editing and uploading about 25 podcasts a week.

Because of the pandemic, the NFL trimmed offseason roster sizes from 90 to 80, eliminating 320 jobs from players like Dunn. For the first time, he couldn’t picture an NFL future.

“The toughest part was … not really being able to accomplish anything I wanted to accomplish,” Dunn says. “I knew for the rest of time it would be awkward to talk about. People would be like, ‘Oh, you played football?’ And they’d be like, ‘Were you in the NFL?’ and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know.’ Like, I don’t know. She always said yes. My mindset was just different.”

“He had his goals,” Marissa says.

“I had my goals. My goal was never to start in a playoff game. It was to just feel a part of a team for one year basically.”

In August, he took his final shot. Dunn asked Flaherty, who lived nearby, to put him through a filmed workout. At the local Pop Warner field, Marissa recorded the whole thing on her phone. When it was over, Dunn thanked Flaherty for all his support through the years and returned to his car, where he had three missed calls. After four of their offensive linemen opted out of the season, the Cleveland Browns were bringing Dunn in. He never had to send anyone the video.

The league’s rules for the 2020 season ended up working in Dunn’s favor. For one, the quarantine period for new players disincentivized teams from bringing in free agents for workouts to replace players already in the building. Plus, the expansion of practice-squad rosters to 16 helped keep Dunn’s spot relatively secure. Finally, he was part of a team.

He still chose to rent month-to-month on the furnished two-bedroom apartment.

Inside were the makings of a pandemic sitcom. Marissa was not allowed to use the shower when Michael was on Zoom for a team meeting, lest the sound of the water running come through if he was called on. He wasn’t allowed in the kitchen when she was recording an episode. She quizzed him about game plans. He lurked in the YouTube comments of her live broadcasts. This time, the apartment complex wouldn’t let Michael replace the bed and the queen size was too small for both of them. So they pushed the single bed next to the queen-size bed to give them both enough room.

“(We’ve been together five years) and I’m in a sleepover,” Marissa says laughing.

Very few of Marissa’s coworkers knew about her proximity to the NFL orbit. For one, she is vigilant about not blurring any journalistic lines. She wanted the writers who cover the Browns to be able to say whatever they wanted about Dunn or the offensive line without taking her into account. There is also the ubiquitous burden of being a female in sports.

“It’s hard being a woman in this business,” she says. “We met in college. A lot of people meet their spouse or significant other in college. I never wanted it to be like, ‘Oh, she’s just dating a football player.’ … You’re judged on so many things.”

“I always love how she says, ‘I never wanted to be judged by my relationship,'” says Dunn. “And I’m like, ‘Your relationship with a camp body offensive lineman?’”

Football-wise, the Browns were having their best season in decades. On Nov. 15, Dunn played in his first regular-season game as one of the players temporarily elevated from the practice squad. In typical roller-coaster fashion, he, Marissa and his parents had to wait out a rare weather delay before kickoff. After the game, a 10-7 win in which Dunn played two snaps on special teams, Marissa, drenched from the rain, raced home to get back to the apartment in time to produce the Browns postgame podcast.

Michael Dunn's Career Transactions

6/15/17	Signed by the Rams
9/2/17	Waived by the Rams
9/3/17	Signed to the Rams' practice squad
9/5/17	Released by the Rams
2/22/18	Signed by the Rams
6/5/18	Waived by the Rams
7/31/18	Signed by the Jaguars
9/1/18	Waived by the Jaguars
9/19/18	Signed to the Jaguars' practice squad
10/16/18	Released by the Jaguars
11/27/18	Signed to the Jaguars' practice squad
12/31/18	Contract with Jaguars expires
1/15/19	Signed by Birmingham Iron in AAF
4/2/19	AAF suspends operations
4/9/19	Signed by the Dolphins
8/31/19	Waived by the Dolphins
10/15/19	Drafted by the Seattle Dragons in the XFL
4/10/20	XFL suspends operations
8/9/20	Signed by the Browns
9/5/20	Waived by the Browns
9/6/20	Signed to the Browns' practice squad
12/23/20	Signed to the Browns' active roster

Dunn was elevated for three more games over the next few weeks and even played an offensive snap in a jumbo set against the Jets. Then, on Dec. 23, Dunn achieved another long-awaited first. After four years, six teams and three leagues, he was finally signed to an active NFL roster.

“It’s amazing to see the person you love and care about follow their dreams through so much adversity and achieve them,” Marissa says. “So many people would have quit, so many people would have been done. He believed in himself.”

The Browns secured their first playoff appearance in 18 years in the regular-season finale with a win over the Steelers, who rested most of their starters. The excitement in Cleveland was quelled the next day when head coach Kevin Stefanski and left guard Joel Bitonio were among the players and coaches on the team to test positive for COVID-19.

From 2017 to 2020, the same four-year span during which Dunn was toiling on the outskirts of NFL relevance, Bitonio played every single offensive snap. Dunn was crushed for his teammate and concerned for Bitonio’s young children at home.

Then, as Michael and Marissa processed the news in their split bed, it dawned on him. “If Joel’s out, I think I’m gonna start.”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

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
(via @DECMGMT)
— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) January 12, 2021

For his part, Dunn’s level of preparation was no different. But he did have to get creative without access to the facility. In stepped Marissa to bark out mock cadences in the apartment’s parking lot so he could work on his pass sets. His nerves were calm until Saturday night, when the team arrived at its hotel in Pittsburgh.

“All of a sudden it hit me,” he remembers. “‘Oh my gosh, what is about to happen?’”

Before the game, Dunn sat in his locker with his head in his hands. On the sidelines, he couldn’t bear to watch the Steelers’ opening possession. He perked up as his teammates went crazy when the Browns defense scored a touchdown on the game’s first play from scrimmage. The rest of the game was the kind of fever dream required to deliver a franchise’s first playoff win in 27 years.

Dunn didn’t just hold his own in the first start of his NFL career. He dominated.

“I think (the Steelers) really feel like they can take advantage of the left guard Michael Dunn replacing Joel Bitonio,” Cris Collinsworth said on the broadcast after an early 17-yard Nick Chubb burst, “and yet (the Browns) go right over Michael Dunn with that run.”

Chubb ran for 21 yards on the next play thanks to Dunn’s seal. The drive was punctuated by an 11-yard Kareem Hunt touchdown run during which Dunn blocked Steelers All-Pro defensive end Cameron Heyward to the ground. In the third quarter, the broadcast showed a full highlight package of his standout performance. Then he helped pave the way for a 40-yard Chubb touchdown on a screen pass that salted the game away.

Attendance that night was limited to family and friends — each player was given a two-ticket allotment (much to the chagrin of Michael’s dad, who purchased a big block of tickets before the state of Pennsylvania limited the attendance guidelines midweek). Marissa was covered by a teammate’s tickets so Michael’s father and sister could attend too.

As ever, Dunn’s ascension meant the roller coaster was due for a dip, which happened when he strained his calf in the fourth quarter. The injury knocked him out of the game and landed him on injured reserve. But there was no killing the mood this time around. Dunn figures he rewatched the game about three times a day the following week. He allowed one single pressure on 33 snaps in pass protection and graded out as the team’s top offensive lineman on the night.

“I almost think of it as that’s a wrap for that whole four-year journey, four-year story,” Dunn says. “It ended with that playoff game. And now let’s get into the next book.”

In February, Michael finally pulled one over on Marissa. It wasn’t easy.

In order to get her to come along for the ride to Maryland, Michael asked his friend in the athletic department to send him a text about a non-existent recruiting event. He knew she’d do anything for the program that brought them together.

“I knew that at some point she would sneakily look at my phone,” says Michael.

“Which I did! Who doesn’t?”

“So I knew I needed some kind of proof,” Michael says.

When they arrived on campus that Saturday morning, Marissa thought he parked in an odd place.

“The entire walk, she’s like, ‘Where are we going? Where are we going?’ I just wasn’t answering,” he says. “I’m like, we both know what’s going on right now.”

When they arrived at the right spot, Michael dropped to a knee in full view of the photographer he arranged to capture the moment. Too overcome with nerves to remember the words he planned, he got right to the point. Would she marry him? Of course she would.

(Courtesy Michael Dunn)

This summer, there were two major projects. The first, wedding planning. The big day is Feb. 26, 2022, 13 days after Super Bowl LVI. The second was snapping, because Dunn’s offensive line coach thinks center might be his best position. Through the first week of Browns camp, Dunn has cross-trained at guard and center. He’s still competing for a roster spot, but this time it looks like he has the inside track. Then again, some of the offensive linemen who opted out last season are back. Nothing in this league comes easy.

“That Steelers game was so incredible,” he says, “and I’m so honored to have been a part of that, but after just a couple weeks of it, I was like, ‘OK that was fun, now let’s make the 53-man roster at the start of the season.'”

Marissa, who was recently declared cancer-free at her 2 1/2-year checkpoint, recognizes how far they’ve come and how hard Michael has worked. She also emphasizes how fortunate he is to have been able to afford to chase his dream. It’s humbling to think of all the talented players who aren’t able to ride it out until they get the chance they deserve. That’s why she’s still riding the high of that Sunday night in Pittsburgh.

“It was beyond proud,” she says. “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.

“What, now I’m talking too much?” she says, looking back at her fiancé.

“No no. I love the passion.”

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photos: Alika Jenner via AP, courtesy of Michael Dunn)