The Ringer NFL Show - The Play Sheet [VIDEO}: How Josh Dobbs Is Winning With the Vikings Right Away

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

The Ringer’s Ben Solak runs through some of Josh Dobbs's tape from his recent play with the Vikings. Dobbs is 2-0 for Minnesota, but is it a fluke given his journeyman status, or is Dobbs stepping up in a way we've never seen from him? Watch 'The Play Sheet' on YouTube or Spotify every Wednesday at 8 a.m. PT. Producer: Cory McConnell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy. I'm Ben Solect. This is the play sheet. It is a video pod we do every Wednesday where we break down some film. So click into the Spotify app, click on the episode, and watch it. We're talking some Josh Dobbs, baby. The opening script. How's Josh Dobbs doing this? Okay, it might not be like the most important thing that happens this NFL season, but unquestionably, one of the coolest things that's happened this NFL season has been Josh Dobbs' performance with the Minnesota Vikings. Dobbs had his first career start last year late in the season for the Titans. Like he was not at all a guy who was considered a potential long-term starter, but then he got traded from the Browns to the Cardinals to hold the seat for Kyla Murray and he actually played pretty good. And then the trade deadline hit and Kirk Cousins was injured. At this point, the Vikings had beaten the Niners. Their offense was

actually playing pretty well. But Kirk goes down with the Achilles tear. They need a quarterback option and they can go get Dobbs from the Cardinals because Kyler Murray's coming back. So the Vikings get Dobbs on his fifth team in the last 12 months and he'll start the rest of the season from Minnesota and then I'll end up journey manning on somewhere else while the Vikings go and get a different quarterback for 2024 and beyond. That's it. Only Dobbs is playing good football for the Vikings. He had to go in against the Falcons. They won. He had to play against the Saints they won. He's going to start the rest of the season and the Vikings are six and four. They're in the playoff picture. Dobbs only started playing because rookie quarterback, Jaron Hall got hurt in the first

quarter against the Falcons. He went into the game not knowing his teammates names, not knowing most of the playbook. He'd only been there for like five days. They hadn't even worked on the cadence. There was a great clip of Dobbs on the sideline with the offensive line practicing the cadence just so that way they would know when he wanted them to snap the football so they wouldn't just get false start penalties the whole way. In that game against Atlanta, head coach Kevin O'Connell literally had to give Josh Dobbs the play call in the headset so he could relay it to the other 10 players in the huddle and then explain to Dobbs in the headset like what the play call meant like, okay, where are the routes going to be? What's the protection going to look like?

Here's what you might need to change all before the head. headset got automatically shut off with 15 seconds left in a play clock. Here's Dobbs talking about what that was like. Yeah, he's like, he's like, you got, you got, you got a corner and a flat on this side. No, that is great. It's like, it's like madden. This is extremely difficult to do. It is hard to contextualize just how challenging this is.

We're going to try to look at a couple examples of it with play action. Okay, so here's a play, not against the Falcons, actually against the Saints, but it's going to help illustrate what we're talking about here. Dombs has masterfully worked the offense down the field. Two-minute drill, end of the first half. Here we are. We're at the 27-yard line, 22 seconds left out of a timeout. This is the play.

Safety split. Dobbsides, T.J. Hawkinson right in the middle. Look at him, drop that ball over to Mario Davis right here. Before the safety arrives, touchdown. Now, because this play came out of a timeout, this reporting from Alec Lewis of the Athletic, Dobbs was able to, on the sideline, ask the coaching staff, Hey, so like, if I get this coverage from the Saints,

the Saints run a lot of too high stuff, split field safeties. Is Hawkinson going to adjust this route at all? Like, is he going to stay on the seam or is he going to kind of bend this thing to the middle of the field? And the Vikings, coach staff gave him the answer. Like, yeah, this thing's going to bend. Hawkinson said it himself, like we get the option to freelance a little bit. I saw what the safety is doing and tried to lean him a little bit and then separated and Josh put it right over the backer. So knowing what we know now, let's step into Josh Dobbs's brain, right?

He said, okay, if the Vikings go split field, is T.J. Hawkinson going to bend this seam route because that seam route can stay a seam and keep working along the top of those numbers if there's a single high safety right because you want to be away from that single high safety but in the event that we split field coverage here right we have two high safeties then this seam route becomes a bender and so we bend this into the middle of the field right so there's two options here on this route relative to the safety shell that you get so firstly d'obs is working off that i have to make sure that these safety stay too high and that way i know hawkinson's going to bend this thing inside. He also just to figure out like what's all this, right? Like the the saints are presenting here

with seven potential rushers, right? This corner has eyes inside. This corner has eyes inside. Linebackers here are low. Might be a blitz look. And if they're playing too high, somebody has to come to the middle of the field, right? Even when Hawkinson runs this bender, someone's going to be someone's going to be. Snap the football. We see. So we get this linebacker comes down and DeMario Davis becomes the Tampa two dropper. But right now his back is to Hawkinson. And so now here, Hawkinson's going to do what he said, right? He's going to lean on the safety a little bit. Watch, he clears the corner and see how he leans outside, just that slight lean right here. Just trying to, and you can see the safety. This is nice. Watch, watch the safety's feet.

Slow just a little bit because he's worried about Hawkinson leaning to the outside. The Vikings have run a lot of this route with this behind it, right? And so he's worried about having to go get to that. Hawkinson leans on a little bit and now bend this thing to the middle of the field. So design-wise, we've got what we wanted. And Hawkinson says, run a nice route. You still as the quarterback have to be able to throw this thing over DeMario Davis as he sinks, but with enough velocity, early enough, enough timing to beat this safety when he closes. This is a challenging layered throw. And he's throwing it to a receiver who he doesn't have rapport with on a route that is sight adjusting on the field that's changing

on the field. And you can't put it in a better spot. End zone view. What I think really makes this play, like special and a good illustration of how well Dobbs are just integrating himself quickly into an offense that he doesn't fully have his hands around is the way he manages the drop right here, right? So we're going to snap the football. Okay, too high

and DeMario Davis is running back. He wants to threaten this deep safety who's over here, right, we can't see him with the idea that Hawkinson's running an outbreaking route, right? He wants to impress upon that deep safety that he might throw this corner route. And so watch Dobbs in the pocket. Watch what he does

of his feet here. What route is he setting to right now? What does it look like he's set in this hallway to? He looks like he's setting it. And you can see Hawkinson's leaning this way. He looks like he's setting that throw to that corner. And that's just going to help pull that safety just a touch because Dobbs knows, all right, Hawkins is going to bend this thing back to the middle of the field. It also helps slow to Mario Davis, right? Because now Davis is thinking, oh, what if he's throwing like a crawl route right here? Like Dobbs looks like he's not throwing anything vertical right now down the seam. And so Davis isn't going to think, oh, I have to keep on gaining depth. He's just you're going to say, all right, I can stop right here.

Maybe I have to go gain some width. So this drop right here, just by moving these feet a little bit and setting to that throw, it makes a little bit more space for that bender. Oh, and what a delightful throw it is. So now we go to this Falcons game. And we obviously, like, we don't have the headset. So we don't know when O'Connell is talking to Dobbs or what he's talking about. But having seen some of the stuff that they're working on and the routes that they're giving him

and the way that Dobbs asking these questions, we can start to extrapolate. For example, like I said, they like to run this corner with this fin route underneath it, right? This is smash. Like this, we have an underneath player here in the flat and then we run the seven cut to the sideline. This is, this is the general term for this is smash. Like if this is a curl route, if this is an outbreaking route from receiver here, whenever we get this high-low stretch, we just call it smash. And so when O'Connell calls this play in the huddle, he says, right, here's our terminology,

you know, go tell the other 10 players this. And then right now in the headset with Dobbs, he's saying, hey, so it's corner to the top. and then it's a fin underneath. Like, it's just smashed. This is a smash read up top. So if it's smash read up top, then we're worried about this outside corner, right? If he stays low to that underneath route,

then we're going to try to throw over the top of him to the seven cut. This is the way that you take the specific language of the Vikings and generalize it. So it's something that Dobbs can understand. When we run this play, then Dobbs is the entire time, right? It's too high. So we like smash against too high. The entire time he's looking to that side of the field. All right, corner stays low.

You can see him climbing the pocket. I'm going to throw this seven cut. Now, because he's not really thrown a lot of balls that Jordan Addison before, this ball is not, he doesn't throw it like to the correct area of the field where exactly where Addison breaks this. He ends up pulling Addison further downfield. And that's an example of the specifics, right? When you're in the Cardinals' offense or in the Brown's offense, the Titans offense, this route maybe breaks. Oh, it breaks at 12 and it's a 45 degree angle, but maybe for Kevin O'Connell breaks it 13 and it's a 60 degree angle, like whatever, right? There's specifics here.

There's nuance and there's chemistry that he doesn't have yet. And so we see him throw this and watch Addison. See how Addison he turns and then when he tracks the ball. It pulls him up feel. He has to go up and get it. And then you take a hit, but you're in the red zone. It's worth the hit. That's how we can see, okay, like Dobbs are just generally throwing that seven route

where he thinks it should go and asking the receivers to make him right. So that's the good adjustments from Madison, the good adjustments from Hawkinson, but also the good job from O'Connell saying, hey, it's smash, run the seven, just get the ball up there and Addison will make it correct. So this has been incredible. It is a huge testament to Kevin O'Connell and Josh Dobbs, who are two smart cookies doing a great job figuring out this offense on the fly. But it would be incorrect to say that, like,

Dobbs are just picking us up really fast, he's super smart, and the office is holding him up, and like that's the entire story, because a huge part of the story is Josh Jobs' mobility. Anytime a quarterback gets dropped in cold to an offense, even when he's been the backup for a while, there's going to be, like, bad timing and missed reads and good defensive calls. He's just going to be shaky when he gets out there.

And that's why it's always really handy to have a QB2 who can run, who has mobility. Think about your Tyrod Taylor's. Think about your Jacoby Brissette's. Mobility isn't a ceiling razor of an offense. It can be. But fundamentally, it's a floor razor. It takes some of the really bad plays, interceptions, sacks, throwaways, and it erases them by just replacing them with scrambles, right?

Which can be like moderately positive. Like, oh, first and 10, four yard scramble, second, and six. But in the case of Dobbs, they can be extremely positive because he's a great athlete. Dobbs is third in the league right now in scramble yards. He's only behind Lamar and Patrick Mahomes. In terms of EPA per scramble, he is first. He's been the most valuable scrambler in the league. Great example here of how scrambling takes you out of bad plays.

This is shot play design, right? We're going to get motion here, and this receiver is just going to hang in the flat. This is going to be a seven and then a stop route. So it's going to look like he's running the seven to the sideline, then he's going to stop and turn around, and then appear to the top of the screen, which is what Dobbs initially wants. We want this dig right here. So this is max-product shot play.

Snap the football, play action fake, turn our head. Watch how fast Dobbs goes through this. Bracket, right? They have an outside player and an inside player. So when we run this dig, it's going to run right into the safety. We can't have that. So Dobbs, boom, he's off it. All right.

Front side now, field side. Here's the seven cut, the seven cut, which is going to stop. There's an underneath player right here, and this corner has good leverage. We can't throw that. Maybe we can throw this ball to the flat, but given the position to this player, he's moving this direction. We probably don't want this either. So you know what?

I don't like front side either. All right. I got pressure. I'm up. And then, so it's the decisiveness here to say, okay, pressure is coming. I'm not going to keep staring at this. I'm not going to, I'm not going to keep staring here. I'm not going to go try to find that.

I'm not going to throw this late. It's already too late to throw. He's going to get tackled. I'm just going to go. So it's decisiveness. It's processing. Now, when you go, how good of an athlete are you? Josh Dobbs is a good athlete.

Watch him make Pete Werner right here missing space. Get around you. And that is a six-yard game on second and nine. I like this, Blake. It's an example of not being fully integrated into the offense yet. but the mobility saves you. It erases the problem, right? This is a full pressure look from the Falcons, right? Everybody's potentially coming and then it's going to be cover zero, right? No save over. Man coverage, man coverage, man coverage. And then with these three players, we'll cover

these remaining two receivers, right? One of these guys will come, you know, the two, we'll cover. So we are in cover zero look. So if you're Dobbs right now, you want to be hot. You want to be able to say, okay, third and ten, I'm going to probably have an unblocked pressure coming my way. I need to get rid of the ball immediately. And he wants to be hot to the top of the screen. right he's immediately okay eyes up this brandon powell right here he's just running this slant he wants to just throw this dobs his eyes are up he's ready for it powell gets his head around right now you see powell put his hand up like just hit me hit me hit me but dobbs are already turning away so like the timing of this here like if he he had a lot of reps with powell he's probably getting this ball out

and trusting powell to turn his head he knows that's the hot read he knows powell knows the hot read it's fine but he just got off the plane five days ago so you you don't yet have that confidence in the guy and in the system. So as it is, Dobbs eats this and tries to make something happen. Unblocked player misses. Two hands on the football. Dobbs stays cool, calm collected. Oh, scramble, I'll leap over you. Get the sticks. First and goal. Watch this block from Kmakers ends on view. All right, there's our snap. I can't, he wants to throw this hot. You can tell he wants to throw this hot. No, nope, I'm just going to get out of here. Okay. Shake you. Get to the outside. Watch this block. Kemakers. Bang!

First down. So that's that third and ten, they get no blitz look. They get a free rush. You should be dead in the water. Josh Dobbs, the athlete, solves the problem. Okay, one more because it's just such an impressive play. This is the touchdown scramble against the Saints, right?

We are going to get deep drop, immediate pressure off the back side. Now you're going to have this route here going along the back line, and then another one here coming along the back line. Underneath routes, trying to control underneath. defenders. I like the fact that he doesn't take the first look right here, right? Like, this is a tempting throw. But with this corner right here, I think when you try to throw this, you risk having this corner come in and just light your receiver up by a Christmas tree. So I don't mind the fact that he eats this. Again, I think it's throwable, but I understand the decision. Now, you can try and wait

long enough to have this second player come into the picture and throw this to him here. But you know the pressure you just escaped, you probably don't have that long. So really good pocket presence from Dobbs. Now we enter scramble drill mode. Oh, the little like the little fake point, like oh, turn around, you know, redirect you, yada, yada, whatever. All this trying to help slow down this unblocked player so you can beat him to the pylon. It's, again, it's decisiveness. It's thinking on the fly untouched over the pylon. Watch from the end of view. All right. Snap. We get that immediate backside pressure. So we have to, we have to step up. And he's like, looking this way, doesn't like that.

Maybe you find again one of those routes along the back line, but there's too much mess going on. His internal clock is screaming at him. So now we enter scramble drill mode. Alante Taylor, number one, don't get got by the quarterback. He didn't fall. Angles didn't get broken, but still, this is not a good look in the film room.

Oh, no. Six points. Okay, so we have clearly a very highly mobile quarterback. Guy who can escape and is smart and understands when to escape and makes good decisions. And so you would assume that just very often he's leaving the structure of the offense to go and create scramble to plays. Like I said, he has a ton of scrambling yards right now.

He's a high EPA scrambler. He's got to just be like constantly leaving structure, but he doesn't. And in fact, like the most encouraging play for Josh Dobbs, the future guy who can fight for starting quarterback jobs, the future quarterback of the Vikings that make the playoff push, the most encouraging play on two games of film is somehow ludicrously an incomplete pass. Here we are. Third Nate.

This is going to be an unblocked pressure from the Falcons. They end up sending all five of these players on this side of the formation, right? And so they get an unblocked pressures. We just saw against an unblocked look, Dobbs just quickly tucked the ball, he avoided the free rusher, and then he created a big play on a scram patrol on third down. So that would be a defensible choice, but that's not what ends up happening here. Snap the football. All right.

So they send that safety from depth, and this linebacker wheels over. But Dobbs knows the second he comes and this single high safety stays high, middle of the field, he's got one-on-one to the bottom of the screen. This is Tristan Jackson, who's a practice squad guy, been in a league for a couple of years. He's only in the game because of the KJ. Osborne injury and the Justin Jefferson injury. This is not even like your one-on-one beater, but he's on a five-step slant that should have space before the safety gets there so long as Dobbs hold him. So what does Dobbs do knowing that there's no way they're blocking up all five guys, knowing that he's going to get lit up like a Christmas tree in the pocket. Dobbs stays. He holds that safety of his eyes, right? Look at look at where the helmet is, just holding that middle of the field safety.

lands on the back foot and delivers no hitch with a with pressure down into his chest no hitch anticipation throws this this slant and hits Tristan Jackson on all 10 fingers and Jackson is is slow out of the break watch Jackson hesitate out of the break here see it watches right foot see how his right foot just slows him down a little bit because he doesn't know where this ball's coming he's worried about the safety again this is like chemistry stuff Dobbs has not been in the building, but this throw right here. It should be first and goal from the one, first and goal from the two. And it is a quarterback in the structure of an offense, taking a one-on-one matchup after reading a Blitz live.

Hard to do, man. When I watch Josh Dobbs, first in Arizona, certainly, but now in Minnesota, where they're just making up offense as they go, I see a quarterback who can have a Gino-Smith career arc. I see a guy who is smart enough, certainly tough enough, taking hits in the pocket. and then mobile enough, legitimate, like, game changing, use him in the read option mobility. So actually, once you get him in an offense that's working for him, once you get him with Kevin O'Connell, and they have a few weeks under their belt, and they're solving some of the timing stuff and the scramble drill stuff and the backyard football nonsense. Like, this can be a Gino Smith moment where Gino got Shane Waldron and it renaissance to his career and got him a second contract.

Dobbs can absolutely have that in this half season with Kevin O'Connell and the Vikings. I completely and totally believe it. They're getting Justin Jefferson back, dude. Like this can work. The Vikings can be a playoff team, and Dobbs can earn himself a legit shot at a starting job next year, whether it's in Minnesota or otherwise, because of this caliber of play.

This is absolutely sustainable. It is 100% legit. Josh Dobbs here to stay, dude. Imagine telling one month ago, just telling October Ben that he was going to be talking about the sustainability of future starter Josh Dobbs in the Minnesota Vikings offense. Weird league we covered, dude.

Weird league. And now do it. For us here on the play sheet, thank you so much for watching. Thank you to Josh Jobs and Kevin O'Connell for just doing football live in color for all of us to see. Thank you to NASA for letting Josh Jobs

be a quarterback and on an astronaut. Thank you to Gordon. For producing the episode. Thank you to you for subscribing the rest of the episodes and watching them.