Pretend you know nothing about the Vikings' quarterback situation. You know nothing about Joshua Dobbs or about Kirk Cousins' Achilles. Now imagine sitting down and watching the past two games with the sound turned off.
How Joshua Dobbs and the Vikings found success in only a dozen days
Success and harmony on the football field usually takes months and minicamps to create. Joshua Dobbs and his Vikings coaches have developed it at warp speed, by comparison.
November 16, 2023 at 12:27PM
It would be impossible to tell that Dobbs has been with the team for the football equivalent of a cup of coffee — and that alone underscores how the Vikings have taken a sledgehammer to NFL conventional wisdom.
He didn't look new to the system. There wasn't chaos on the field. Nothing that even remotely suggested something was amiss. The offense functioned as any effective offense should, with synergy between 11 players.
"That's good," center Garrett Bradbury said. "That means Josh is doing a good job and the coaches are doing a good job."
This scenario also runs counter to football ideology that chemistry and cohesion require time on task in the offseason. Players and coaches often surmise that a high-functioning offense is a testament to hours of rehearsal in minicamps, OTAs, training camp and individual throwing sessions between a quarterback and his receivers in the summer. The more time together, the better.
Then Dobbs shows up one day, starts slinging the ball to players he had never met, running an offense that he barely knew with few hiccups and nobody can tell a difference.
Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell described his overall system and teaching points for that position as "quarterback-friendly." However, he also noted that "it's very rare to be able to do it with the kind of ease that he's done it with."
Two wins in his first 12 days with the team — very rare indeed.
Dobbs' scrambling ability translates to any offense. What's been equally impressive is that his passing statistics have been better in two games with the Vikings than in previous stops. He has completed 67% of his passes with a 101.4 quarterback rating against two top-10 defenses. This despite still getting to know his receivers' tendencies and skillsets.
Dobbs and skill-position players are working together to find "ways to build in as many game-simulated reps as we can," he said. That includes conversations in the locker room about how they run certain routes, and receivers staying after practice to catch passes so that Dobbs can get a better understanding of their speed and body movement.
If his connection with tight end T.J. Hockenson already seems advanced, both credit throwing sessions they had in Nashville the past few summers when they weren't teammates. It's not uncommon for players on different teams who live or train in the same city to get together for workouts.
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"It was cool to have those banked reps with somebody, especially one of your best playmakers on offense," Dobbs said.
Banked reps are the product of time together. Dobbs' get-to-know-them process with his receivers is like speed dating. Fortunately, he has experience in this area, having bounced from team to team throughout his career, which has forced him to be a quick study.
That the Vikings are 2-0 with Dobbs piloting the offense underscores a salient point: Coaching matters. A lot.
O'Connell's calming influence in guiding Dobbs and the entire offense through a challenging situation cannot be overstated. Not every head coach would produce a similar result under the same circumstances.
O'Connell's staff has collaborated with Dobbs to identify plays and concepts that he's comfortable executing based on his previous experiences. That streamlined process allows Dobbs to just react and play more freely than feel encumbered by adjusting to another new scheme.
It also helps that Dobbs is incredibly intelligent. He finds "synergy" between his background in aerospace engineering and playing quarterback. Both areas, he said, require critical thinking, problem-solving and a repetition of process.
"Obviously as an engineer, you're not given a 40-second clock to do that," he said. "Things happen a little quicker on the football field."
His assimilation to a new offense is moving at light speed. Quarterbacks normally spend months learning and digesting a playbook while also building chemistry with receivers. Dobbs is doing that on the fly.
Based on how he's played, you can't tell a difference.
Mike Conley was in Minneapolis, where he sounded the Gjallarhorn at the Vikings game, on Sunday during the robbery.
