How Josh Dobbs and Kevin O'Connell Pulled Off an Incredible Feat in Atlanta
The Vikings traded for Josh Dobbs on Tuesday. He practiced in Minnesota for the first time on Wednesday. And after cramming in as much information as possible in a handful of days, he put together a legendary Vikings debut in Atlanta on Sunday.
Dobbs was thrust into action when new starter Jaren Hall suffered a concussion in the first quarter. After getting off to a shaky start, he settled in and scored three touchdowns — including a game-winning pass to Brandon Powell with 22 seconds left — in a 31-28 Vikings victory over the Falcons. No player in franchise history had ever previously led a game-winning drive in their Vikings debut.
What Dobbs and Kevin O'Connell pulled off together in this game was nothing short of incredible. To even play quarterback at a competent level in the NFL just five days after joining a new team would be impressive. For Dobbs to put together five scoring drives, make all kinds of clutch plays, and lead a comeback win on the road was downright amazing.
Because Hall was being prepared to start this week, Dobbs didn't take any reps with the first-team offense in practice. He had never taken a snap from Garrett Bradbury before. Some of the passes he completed during the game may have been the first ball he had ever thrown to that player in any setting. He had to go over snap cadences with the offensive line on the sideline before coming into the game.
Perhaps most notably, Dobbs didn't even know all of his teammates' names on Sunday.
"If we had to pull up a roster and had to go names, I would be a bad teammate today," Dobbs said after the game. "I knew Alex (Mattison), I knew a lot of first names — Alex, Brandon (Powell). I know a lot of nicknames, per se, but name names, that's for this week. That's an assignment for this week."
Josh Dobbs and Garrett Bradbury embrace after the Vikings' 31-28 win over the Falcons.
Dobbs obviously deserves a ton of credit for his performance. After a slow start that included taking a safety and losing two fumbles in his first four possessions, he finished with 158 yards and two touchdowns as a passer, plus 66 yards and another score as a runner. He processed a ton of new information, delivered big-time throws, and used his legs to make critical plays that extended drives.
This was also among the most impressive coaching performances of O'Connell's career. When Hall went down, the Vikings were without all three of the quarterbacks they began this season with. O'Connell helped Dobbs out every step of the way, and the result was a truly remarkable victory in which the Vikings scored a season-high 31 points.
O'Connell's voice was in Dobbs' headset before every snap, not just calling the play but giving him pointers and relating the call to terminology he knew Dobbs was familiar with from past stops in his career.
"If you could hear the headset, there was a lot going on," Dobbs said. "It was great that Kevin played quarterback, so he obviously knows what I’m going through. He's able to communicate effectively like, ‘Hey, this what you’re looking at. This is what you have on this side of the page. This is what you have on that side of the page.' He’s able to talk in lingos that I come from to be able to simplify it for me. Then from there, obviously, it was just about going out and playing. I thought the communication was awesome, starting with (quarterbacks coach) Chris (O’Hara) on the sideline, then with Kevin, then to me on the field. It put me in a position to succeed."
Dobbs, who is on his seventh different team, has been in the NFL since 2017 and had been starting all year for the Cardinals. It's well-documented that he's a former aerospace engineering major and an extremely intelligent person. He knows how to read defenses. He knows the basic concepts teams run in different offensive systems. The biggest challenge for him was getting the calls down this week and learning the Vikings' terminology. Even if teams run similar concepts, they all have their own specific language.
At times throughout the game, O'Connell was translating things for Dobbs on the fly as he gave him the call.
"It's like if you were taking AP Spanish all year and you showed up on Wednesday and someone told you you have an AP French exam on Sunday," Dobbs said. "And you gotta go execute. Someone's gonna talk to you in Spanish and translate it to the French. That’s kind of what was going on out there. I’m able to process a lot of information and be able to react on it and not let it handcuff myself and my play, so it was good."
Dobbs' dual-threat ability was on full display in this game. In the second quarter, he extended a drive with a ridiculous scramble for a conversion on third and long before hitting Alexander Mattison for a short touchdown. The Vikings' offense started to get in a bit of a rhythm in the third quarter; Dobbs led a field goal drive and later scrambled 18 yards for a touchdown, adding a two-point conversion to tie the game at 21. The Vikings' defense helped in a big way with takeaways on the first play of two consecutive Falcons possessions in the third.
With a little over two minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Falcons had taken a 28-24 lead. Dobbs got the ball back with a chance to be a hero — and that's exactly what he did. He threw a great ball to Jordan Addison for 24 yards up the right sideline. Then, on fourth and 7, he escaped pressure and scrambled 22 yards to keep the Vikings alive. Three plays later, he scanned the field and hit Powell for the game-winner with 22 seconds on the clock.
The throw to Powell was his first time ever repping that particular play.
"That play was in the playbook, it was in our red zone install for this week," Dobbs said. "That was my first time repping the play, but it was in the game plan. I told the coaches — they were asking me my comfort level with everything in the playbook and how I felt with before the game leading up, if something were to happen. I said 'Anything on this call sheet that we installed this week, I got it. I can run it, I got it, whether it's no-huddle, whether it's tempo, whether it's a game plan call — whatever it is, I got it.' Now, you start pulling stuff from OTA one and two, I might be a little handcuffed out there, but if you put it on the call sheet, I got it. That was one of our red zone plays, we were able take advantage of the look the defense was giving, and (Powell) did a great job getting open for me."
When the dust settled, the Vikings had won their fourth consecutive game. Amazingly, they were flagged just once all day in a situation where it would've been understandable if they had committed all kinds of procedural pre-snap penalties.
Dobbs was thrust into what should've been almost an impossible situation. He and his head coach handled it exceptionally well and delivered a victory that will go down in Vikings history.
"I hope people understand that what Josh Dobbs was able to accomplish was very, very special, and I’m really proud of him," O'Connell said. "What he was able to do in five days' time was as impressive (as anything) I've seen a quarterback do. To come here against that defense and find a way. ... This one will be special to me for a long time."
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