Social media reacts to Josh Dobbs’ Monday Night Football debut with the Minnesota Vikings.
Chicago (4-8) defeated Minnesota (6-6), 12-10, on Monday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Former Tennessee quarterback Josh Dobbs appeared in his fourth game with the Vikings.
Dobbs completed 22-of-32 passing attempts for 185 yards, one touchdown and four interceptions. He also rushed for 11 yards on two attempts.
The former Vol was traded from Arizona to the Vikings at the Oct. 31 deadline.
Dobbs appeared in eight games for Arizona in 2023. He recorded 1,569 passing yards, eight passing touchdowns, 258 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns with the Cardinals.
The Saints defense has struggled limiting quarterback runs. Can they break that trend against Desmond Ridder?
The New Orleans Saints have had struggles defending quarterbacks from scrambling this year. Dennis Allen identified Desmond Ridder, Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback, as a threat with his legs multiple times in his Monday press conference. New Orleans isn’t ignorant of their struggles, Allen pointed that out those too.
Last game, New Orleans used a spy against Joshua Dobbs occasionally in case he took off to run, which was more effective in the second half (allowing 4 rushing yards) than in the first half (40). One would expect there to be a similar plan in place for Ridder. The only question is will it work.
Ridder hasn’t been overly effective with his legs this year, but neither had Trevor Lawerence or Tyson Bagent prior to facing the Saints. Both players had their most rushing yards of the season against New Orleans. Ridder rushed for a season-high 39 yards versus the Green Bay Packers. If Dennis Allen’s comments are any indication, the Saints should have a good plan prepared for Ridder’s legs.
Dobbs completed 20-of-32 passing attempts for 221 yards, one touchdown and one interceptions. He rushed for 21 yards and one touchdown on eight attempts.
Dobbs was traded to the Vikings from Arizona at the deadline on Oct. 31.
Dobbs played quarterback at Tennessee from 2013-16 under head coach Butch Jones.
He totaled 7,138 passing yards, 53 passing touchdowns, 2,160 rushing yards, 32 rushing rushing touchdowns, 62 receiving yards and two receiving touchdowns for the Vols.
Arizona traded a 2024 fifth-round draft pick to Cleveland for Dobbs and a 2024 seventh-round draft selection ahead of the 2023 season.
Minnesota will next play Monday against Chicago. Kickoff is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. EST at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Four New Orleans Saints defenders were fined for a combined $44,000 after last week’s Minnesota Vikings game:
Four New Orleans Saints defenders were fined more than $44,000 after last week’s Minnesota Vikings game, the NFL announced, stemming from penalties issued during the Week 11 matchup.
Here’s who received fines from the league office in New York:
Your eyes aren’t fooling you. The New Orleans Saints have the NFL’s slowest pass rush, taking more time to get to the quarterback than any other team:
Dobbs has gotten to face the Saints and Falcons defense the last two weeks with the Vikings, which has certainly affected his time to pressure. pic.twitter.com/uJhM6MLzPj
If you’ve been watching the New Orleans Saints defense this year and found yourself muttering or shouting some variant of “That’s too much time!” when the opposing quarterback drops back to pass, you aren’t crazy. Research from Doug Analytics found that the Saints have posted the NFL’s slowed pass rush unit through the first 10 weeks of the season.
And that checks out when you look at other stats. The Saints are tied for the fifth-fewest sacks (18) going into their Week 11 bye. Their Pro Football Reference pressure rate is 19.4%, ninth-worst around the league. That’s a slight improvement over last year’s 17.5% pressure rate, which was fourth-lowest, but the big difference is that the Saints aren’t finishing pressures with sacks. They had 48 sacks a year ago. They would need to average 4.3 sacks per game through these last seven weeks to match that total.
The problem is a lack of speed along the defensive front. Cameron Jordan is still being asked to be their leading rusher off the edge when his body just doesn’t have that extra gear anymore. He’s never been known for his speed off the snap, so Jordan’s game should age well as a run defender and power rusher, but the Saints must compensate for that by getting faster at other spots. Carl Granderson has some speed element to his game and Bryan Bresee can move quickly along the interior, but those are just two of the eight players in the rotation most weeks.
Whiffing on so many early-round draft picks hurts. The Saints swung and missed on first-round defensive ends like Marcus Davenport and Payton Turner and their rookie second-round pick Isaiah Foskey has had few snaps to show what he can do. They badly need one of those guys to step up and add some athleticism to the mix. Jason Pierre-Paul could improve the group but he isn’t helping them get younger.
Interestingly, the next-slowest pass rush in this graph comes from the Washington Commanders. It’s a comprehensive look at teams from Weeks 1 through 10, so that includes edge rushers Montez Sweat and Chase Young, both of whom were dealt at the NFL trade deadline. There was an uproar from Saints fans about not acquiring one of them, but it sure looks like they wouldn’t have cured the specific problem ailing the Saints defense.
A lacking athleticism up front is the issue. The Saints are slow to get after the quarterback, slow to put hands on him, and slow to keep up with him when he rolls out of the pocket looking to throw downfield. We saw them get gashed consistently by Joshua Dobbs and Tyson Bagent in recent weeks after C.J. Stroud did it a few weeks earlier. Any quarterback who can use their legs can challenge them.
Dennis Allen is a believer in the idea that the secondary and pass rush must work in tandem. He’s built this defense so that the quarterback is forced to hold onto the ball long enough for the rush to get home. But even a secondary full of All-Pro corners will get beaten if they’re all asked to cover for four, five, or six seconds. The Saints can’t afford to stop investing resources in the pass rush unit. Hopefully one of those draft picks hits soon.
Alvin Kamara and Alontae Taylor spent their bye week catching the Tennessee-Georgia game:
A lot of NFL players choose to spend their bye weeks in a lot of different ways. Some of them like to take a quick vacation out of town or spend time with their family, and others take the opportunity to go back to college and catch a game at their old stadium. That’s what New Orleans Saints stars Alvin Kamara and Alontae Taylor did on Saturday.
Kamara and Taylor were spotted on the Tennessee sideline for the Volunteers’ game with the Georgia Bulldogs. Both players endeared themselves to Vols fans during their time at Neyland Stadium, as did their most recent opponent: Joshua Dobbs. A college teammate of Kamara’s, the Saints running back spoke about Dobbs’ success in a quick chat with Karthik Venkataraman for WBIR Sports.
“It’s exciting, I’m happy for him,” Kamara shouted over the 101,915-strong crowd. “He’s always been a baller, he’s a gamer. So given the opportunity I knew he’d perform. It’s definitively exciting for him and happy that he’s able to excel in the position that he’s in.”
Georgia won the day 38-10, but Tennessee tried to make a fight of it. Vols running back Jaylen Wright sprang free for a 75-yard touchdown run on their first play from scrimmage but was limited to just 15 yards on his eight subsequent carries. The usually-explosive Tennessee passing attack was smothered by Georgia’s defense.
The Saints have added plenty of talent from Tennessee in recent years, but they oddly don’t have a single Bulldog on the roster. Georgia’s top 2024 draft prospects include tight end Brock Bowers (who caught 7 passes for 60 yards) and right tackle Amarius Mims (who recently returned from ankle surgery), as well as cornerback Kamari Lassiter (who finished with a tackle and a pass deflection). Maybe 2024 is the year the Saints go down to Georgia.
The Denver Broncos look to win their fourth game in a row on Sunday!
The Denver Broncos head into their Week 11 matchup with the Minnesota Vikings on an impressive three-game winning streak, while the Vikings are coming off a fantastic effort by newly-minted quarterback Joshua Dobbs against the New Orleans Saints.
At the beginning of 2023, these two teams had a similar trajectory. The Vikings and Broncos both started out 0-3, but Minnesota has won five in a row and they are sitting at 6-4. The Broncos went 0-3, before winning four of their next six games, where they sit at 4-5.
How have these two teams fared against one another in the past?
Minnesota has an all-time 8-7 advantage over Denver, where the Broncos have won three out of the past four meetings.
The last time these two teams matched up was in 2019, when these teams had two different quarterbacks, Brandon Allen for the Broncos and Kirk Cousins for the Vikings. This time around, Minnesota has Dobbs behind center, and Denver with Russell Wilson.
Turning back the clock, Allen completed 17-of-39 passes for 240 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Cousins went 29-of-35 for 319 yards and three touchdowns in a 27-23 Vikings win last time.
Do the Broncos have enough Mile High magic to win four games in a row? We’ll find out on Sunday Night Football!
The Browns can win despite bad QB play — see the last two months — but dealing away Dobbs hurts way more now.
Deshaun Watson, the league’s 33rd-best quarterback since 2022, will not finish the 2023 season. It will mark his second “incomplete” grade in two years as a Cleveland Brown, the first marred by an 11-game suspension related to more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct and what the NFL itself would later describe as a pattern of “predatory behavior.”
Watson was shut down Wednesday after playing through a shoulder injury the bulk of the year. He leaves behind a 6-3 team that probably wasn’t going far in the playoffs with or without him.
Watson wasn’t very good, even with a full year of Browns experience and Kevin Stefanski’s — the guy who guided Baker Mayfield to a playoff win — guidance. Watson played in six games this season and only had two with a passer rating higher than 75.0 (Zach Wilson’s passer rating in 2023 is 74.6).
He contributed negative expected points added (EPA) in half his outings. The only team he recorded a positive EPA against that currently has a winning record is the Baltimore Ravens and even that came after early struggles. In a crucial game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Kenny Pickett was responsible for nearly negative-10 points of total value and was still twice as useful as Watson.
via RBSDM.com
Now his job will fall to PJ Walker, who has been demonstably worse, or rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson who, ditto. If you stack the three quarterbacks who’ve made at least one start for the Browns against every passer who’s taken at least 40 snaps this season, you get a mediocreWatson and two terrible, horrible, very bad no good options.
via RBSDM.com and the author.
There’s a guy on that list not far behind Watson’s 2023 performance. A player with a 99.9 passer rating or better in five games this season and a positive EPA, like Watson, in half his appearances. A guy who knows the Browns playbook because he spent the preseason with Cleveland.
Joshua Dobbs.
The Browns traded Dobbs to the Arizona Cardinals in August and the reaction had nothing to do with Cleveland. At the time, it seemed like a minor swap announcing the Cardinals’ intention to tank the season away by releasing one journeyman backup QB (Colt McCoy) and replacing him with another. But in reality it was a declaration Stefanski was happy to roll with Walker and Thompson-Robinson as his backups rather than the steadier and less exciting Dobbs.
This was a mistake. Dobbs was proven competent but inconsistent with a depleted Cardinals team. He’s been electric in two appearances, both wins, with the Minnesota Vikings after they acquired him for a swap of late Day 3 draft picks following Kirk Cousins’ Achilles tear. He’s been doing so while looking like the kind of guy who could be extremely useful in a Browns offense that’s been buoyed by Watson’s scrambling abilities.
Don’t get me wrong. While Dobbs’ revival in Minnesota is wonderful to see, it’s unlikely it will last. Over his seven year career he has yet to prove he can sustain the level of play that would make him a consistent positive presence as a starting quarterback.
But that’s not what the Browns need right now. They have a defense that ranks No. 1 in overall DVOA and has allowed fewer yards than anyone in the league. They have an offensive line that’s kept a running game viable despite the loss of Nick Chubb to injury.
That’s been enough to carry this team to wins vs. the San Francisco 49ers and Indianapolis Colts in games where Walker completed 50 percent of his passes, gained 360 TOTAL yards through the air and threw three interceptions without a single touchdown pass. It’s been enough to go 6-3 despite Watson playing roughly as efficiently as Derek Carr or Jordan Love while being paid a fully guaranteed $46 million annually through 2026.
Cleveland can make it to the playoffs without Watson or Dobbs. But the domino effect of dealing away a journeyman backup in August (along with a seventh round pick) to reap a fifth round selection next spring now means they’ll be turning to two of the league’s worst quarterbacks to start the final eight games of the regular season.
Maybe that doesn’t change the overall trajectory of the Browns’ playoff path, but it certainly sucks all the hope out of the room a bit earlier than expected.
Josh Dobbs is even leaving Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell speechless with how well he’s playing.
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs continues to wow his new team, as he’s 2-0 leading the franchise after it lost quarterback Kirk Cousins to injury for the season.
On a touchdown against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, Dobbs stunned even Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell with how he was able to use his mobility to escape a potentially busted play and turn it into a touchdown.
All O’Connell could do was just smile and happily shrug with Dobbs for how genuinely impressed he was that the journeyman quarterback has been able to run the Minnesota offense as effectively as he has in just two starts.
Dobbs is beginning to write himself quite a story with the Vikings, as the team sits 5-4 on the season after an 0-3 start.
While things looked grim for Minnesota after Cousins went down, Dobbs has provided the kind of lifeline that few people could’ve expected at this point in the season.
Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski developed a unique practice regiment for backup quarterbacks that has led them to success
Backup quarterback guru and The Athletic journalist Kalyn Kahler published an article about Josh Dobbs and the cadence backup quarterbacks must adopt as their own. The cadence, the color-number code quarterbacks recite before the play telling the center when to snap the ball, is the first and most important part of any play.
Recreating the starting quarterback’s cadence is the most important job a backup quarterback can do. Backup quarterbacks can match the rhythm of the starting quarterback far more easily than they can match the starters’ talent or brains. The same rhythm is needed to keep the other 11 players on the same beat that they’re used to.
Kevin Stefanski developed a method to help backup quarterbacks parrot the cadence of the starting quarterback during his time in Minnesota. Stefanski has every quarterback mimic the cadence during practice. Stefanski installed recorders in all of the quarterback helmets so the staff could go over each cadence in the meeting room later. This is what Josh Dobbs had to say about the experience last season, via The Athletic.
“They prepare us really well,” he said. “So in the QB meetings, we will listen to Deshaun, myself, Jacoby, go through a cadence, making sure that they sound the same. … In Pittsburgh, we didn’t do that. So at practice, you were behind (the starter) and you were saying the cadence as he went through it, to work on mimicking that.”
