IOWA CITY, Iowa — Gennings Dunker turned the NFL combine into his own personal showcase with his massive tattooed shoulders, flowing red mullet and slow-motion 40-yard dash that was later set to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” on social media.
The phenomenon traces back a month earlier, to an interview with NFL Network at the Senior Bowl in which Dunker described how he drinks four massive cups of coffee before every practice. With a 6-foot-5, 320-pound frame that looks like an underestimate in person, Dunker truly is larger than life. And the former Iowa offensive lineman remained humble and authentic despite his pre-draft celebrity whirlwind in the lead-up to his selection by the Pittsburgh Steelers at No. 96 in the third round of the NFL Draft.
“The craziest thing was going through O’Hare Airport after the combine,” Dunker said. “I got stopped by like six people.”
Bring up Dunker around his college teammates and coaches, and you’ll get a smile, a chuckle and a head shake. He frequently played pranks, often reciprocated by his friends. He once let ducks loose at tiny Lena-Winslow (Ill.) High School and was told he wouldn’t be allowed to attend his graduation ceremony if he didn’t clean up their (considerable) mess. Dunker’s former roommate was a women’s basketball manager who was particular with his belongings. So, Dunker enlisted other people to rearrange the apartment because “he’s going to hate it.”
“He loves the word ‘bro,’ like ‘Sup bro’ all the time,” Iowa quarterback Mark Gronowski said. “It’s pure, genuine, like happiness, joy, positive vibes all the time with him.”
Dunker’s charismatic personality compares favorably with former Iowa tight end George Kittle, who’s now a perennial Pro Bowler with the San Francisco 49ers. He stands out in a room full of alphas with his life-of-the-party disposition. But it’s his physically imposing play as a first-team All-Big Ten offensive tackle that led to his name being called on Friday.
On a unit that won the Joe Moore Award as college football’s best offensive line, Dunker became one of the best drive blockers in the nation. There are scores of videos of him driving defensive linemen across the field and planting them on their backs. He started 38 games mostly at right tackle at Iowa and has positional flexibility. At the Senior Bowl, some teams told him he’s a tackle, while others consider him a guard. At either spot, Dunker is a power performer.
“Dunk is all strength, all the time,” Iowa football strength coach Rai Braithwaite said. “He’s a very force-driven athlete, so a lot of that stuff comes naturally to him. There’s areas of development that he still has to undergo; people see a big hulking mass of a man. And he’ll even acknowledge that he has to develop more fluidity, which he understands. I think that’s the next step in his physical evolution, is being a little more looser, for lack of a better term.”
Dunker squats 680 pounds, which is just shy of the program record set by draft-eligible center Logan Jones (705). It’s one of many competitions between the duo, including the popular Solon Beef Days Hay Bale toss (Dunker won twice) and the program’s hang clean record leaderboard (Jones ranks second behind Tristan Wirfs in Iowa history). Even the combine became a competition between them. Dunker trained in Fort Myers, Fla., hoping to beat Jones in the vertical and broad jumps. Dunker celebrated when his 32.5-inch vertical edged Jones by half an inch. Jones won the long jump.
“The whole time in Florida, I was like, ‘I’ve got to out-jump LoJo,’” Dunker said. “I was thinking that every day we would do vertical because I wanted to so bad. I got it by half an inch.”
Dunker has unbridled enthusiasm and a habit for using “awesome” to describe just about everything. It’s likely the coffee has something to do with it.
On an early April morning about a mile west of Kinnick Stadium, Dunker walked into a coffee shop and ordered a large macchiato, which already contained two espresso shots, then added three more. That type of drink would cause some people to roll somersaults back to the football facility, but for Dunker, it’s part of his morning routine.
“For the Senior Bowl, before the game I went downstairs to the lobby and I got like, five shots of espresso straight, and then like, 30 minutes before the game, I just chugged it,” Dunker said. “Then I had a Monster (energy drink) at halftime. It was awesome. I was rolling.”
“His diet’s insane,” Iowa tight end Hayden Large said. “I don’t know how a person functions really, but he’s a different breed.”
But don’t mistake Dunker’s eccentricity for a lack of seriousness. He was an academic All-American majoring in physiology with a pre-med focus. The worst grade he received in chemistry was an A-minus, and with the class graded on a curve, he liked the competition. For two summers he worked at a bone growth research lab in North Liberty, Iowa, and he volunteered at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He keeps a strict diet — outside of the coffee, of course.
Dunker, who admitted at the combine he “looked like kind of a meathead,” is naturally inquisitive, never watched TV growing up and won school competitions for reading the most books. One of his favorites is “A Man’s Search for Meaning” by Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. At the combine, NFL prospects take cognitive tests. Dunker was told he was one of two players to call for his results. The other was his former Iowa offensive linemate Beau Stephens.
As a high school student, Dunker worked two jobs. One was at a restaurant now called the Lena Brewing Company, where he held his draft party and turned it into a fundraiser for his high school football program. The other was clearing timber and baling hay. He credits both for strengthening his work ethic.
This spring, Dunker spent six days a week around football in Iowa City, and three of them were working with Iowa’s early enrollees. He’s an early riser who enjoys arriving at the football complex at 6 a.m., and when his playing career concludes, he wants to coach. But that might be a ways out in the future.
Materialism has eluded Dunker, who said if he had another year of eligibility, “I’d probably still be at Iowa.” He drove an old farm truck until the engine “blew up,” then went to a dealership and bought one of the cheaper ones on the lot with his NIL and revenue sharing money. He goes thrift-store shopping for clothes — he once purchased matching Hawaiian shirts for himself and his high school football coach — or wears what he received for free through the school. Instead of splurging on himself, he helps his brother with tuition at Division II Upper Iowa. He grew up drinking from cheap coffee makers with his dad, so he bought him a Keurig.
“My dad drinks an insane amount; it’s probably an unhealthy amount,” Dunker said. “He probably has like, two or three pots a day. My senior year I started drinking it, and I love it.”
Dunker brings a large Stanley cup filled with coffee to every practice and game. He downs it in the locker room, and later on the sideline. With his hair flying under his helmet, he rolls defenders off the line of scrimmage. Then he’ll blink rapidly or flex to his teammates, crack a joke and do it again. He looks forward to the same routine with his new NFL teammates, but don’t count on his personality changing too much. No matter his level of football, Dunker — and his mullet — is the life of the party.
“He just always puts a smile on everybody’s face that he talks to,” Gronowski said. “That’s just who he is, and guys love him for it.”
