Who needs practice − or to know who you are playing with − when you’re Joshua Dobbs?
Just five days after he was traded from the Arizona Cardinals to the Minnesota Vikings, the quarterback was thrust into his new team’s road game against the Atlanta Falcons after rookie starter Jaren Hall was injured on the team’s second possession of the day.
Even without taking a single snap with the offense in the practice leading up to Sunday, Dobbs delivered an incredible come-from-behind performance by completing 20 of 30 passes for 158 yards and two touchdown passes, including the game-winning scoring throw to Brandon Powell with 22 seconds left to lift Minnesota into a 31-28 win. The result moved the Vikings to 5-4 on the season for their fourth-straight victory.
Dobbs was also the leading rusher on the day, with seven carries for 66 yards and a touchdown run, with several runs extending drives and keeping hopes of a win alive.
‘He’s smart as hell’
Powell and fellow Vikings receiver Jordan Addison both confirmed to reporters postgame that Dobbs didn’t throw any passes during practice.
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‘He’s smart as hell. To be able to come in here and learn that offense that fast and go out there and call them plays, he’s smart. That’s a smart dude,’ Powell said. ‘He was paying attention. Came in the game, never practicing, and we won the game.
‘It’s hard to go out there and execute when you don’t get the reps, but he did it.’
Addison added that everyone in the offensive huddle was letting Dobbs know what they’d be doing on each play, and confirming what routes receivers would run. Regardless, Dobbs was at the center of a big celebration with teammates in the locker room after the win.
Powell’s right; Dobbs is ‘smart as hell.’ He was an aerospace engineering major at the University of Tennessee and after he graduated with a 4.0 GPA he did an externship with NASA. So ‘rocket scientist’ isn’t an exaggeration.
Dobbs plans on learning teammates’ names
Dobbs, who was the Cardinals’ starter for eight games after being traded by the Cleveland Browns just before the start of the regular season, described the whirlwind of the week like someone taking a Spanish class for an entire year and then being told they need to take a test in French. He said coaches asked him how comfortable he felt with the playbook in case he needed to play, to which he said, ‘anything on this call sheet that we installed this week, I got it. I can run it. I got it.’ He even admitted that going into Sunday, he didn’t know the majority of his teammates’ full names.
‘If we had to pull up a roster of names, I’ll be a bad teammate today,’ Dobbs said.
But the fourth-round pick in the 2017 NFL draft has his next thing to learn, as Minnesota will prepare to face the New Orleans Saints in Week 10.
‘Names, that’s for this week. That’s an assignment for this week,’ Dobbs said.