Joshua Dobbs won the first game of his career in Week 3 this year. The Arizona Cardinals entered their game against the Dallas Cowboys as 13-point underdogs at home and won 28-16. Dobbs put up modest numbers, going 17/21 for 189 yards and a touchdown. But he didn’t throw an interception and picked up 55 yards on the ground.
“It was a tremendous full-circle moment,” Dobbs told reporters in Glendale, “because it feels like yesterday, man, I was getting ready for my first start on Thursday night against the Dallas Cowboys [last season with the Tennessee Titans]. So, yeah, it was a great full-circle moment, and so it was good to take a moment to enjoy it.”
The Pittsburgh Steelers took Dobbs in the fourth round of the 2017 draft, and he played six games in black and gold. But he made his first two career starts with the Tennessee Titans last year. He won his first game in Week 3 but lost the next five. The Minnesota Vikings traded for him at the deadline after Gannon decided to start rookie quarterback Clayton Tune in Week 9. Minnesota’s hope? Dobbs would adapt quickly under pressure.
Dobbs stepped in for the injured Jaren Hall last week, leading the Vikings to a 31-28 victory in Atlanta. He arrived in the middle of the week and didn’t get first-team reps at practice, but Kevin O’Connell acted as ground control. He guided Dobbs, who graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Tennesee, through the playbook. O’Connell used the 15 seconds the league allows him to speak into the quarterback’s helmet to describe the play and where to go with the ball. Dobbs processed the information, made the right reads, and improvised when necessary.
The Vikings picked up their fourth-straight victory in Georgia, a must-win given the circumstances. They are in the middle of a stretch of five winnable games and in no position to tank. They started the season 0-3 but have won four of their last five, taking them out of the Caleb Williams sweepstakes. There is no looking back. Minnesota is in no-man’s land at 5-4. Should they start trading wins and losses, they’ll end up a .500 team like Mike Zimmer’s squads. They’d have a strong enough record that they can’t get a top pick but not good enough to make the playoffs.
Minnesota finds itself on an Appolo 13 mission. In the aborted 1970 moon landing, an oxygen tank exploded on the aircraft, stranding America’s fifth crewed mission to the moon in the empty vacuum of space. The three astronauts had to work with ground control to return to Earth, knowing that another oxygen tank was leaking and they had limited power. “Failure,” NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz famously declared, “is not an option.”
The scene above is from the 1995 film Appolo 13, which depicts the mission. To return home, the Apollo 13 crew had to adapt the lunar module’s square carbon dioxide filter to fit into the command module’s round filter receptacle. In lay terms, they had to fit a square peg into a round hole. Ground control eventually creates a Rube Goldberg device to fix the CO2 filter, and the three astronauts begin to return to Earth.
O’Connell acted as Kranz last week, helping his journeyman quarterback defeat the Atlanta Falcons. But beating a team led by the mustachioed Arthur Smith, who’s allergic to sleeves and inquiries about his superstar tight end, is one thing. Scoring against the New Orleans Saints’ vaunted defense is another. O’Connell must help his lead astronaut through the final eight games to avoid getting lost in space.
Like Apollo 13, the Vikings experienced a failure to launch, and injuries have sapped the team of some of its oxygen. Dobbs got his opportunity last week because Kirk Cousins suffered a season-ending Achilles injury in Green Bay. Christian Darrisaw missed the game last week with a groin injury. Justin Jefferson has been out with a hamstring injury since Week 5. But Darrisaw will return this week, and Jefferson will eventually make his way back.
Dobbs has a crew to work with and a steady hand at the command center. T.J. Hockenson is playing through injury, and Jordan Addison can turn on the burners. Dobbs has rocket-scientist smarts, allowing him to digest the playbook rapidly, and he has O’Connell in his ear. The Vikings could have tanked after their rocky launch. Instead, they decided to shoot for the moon. Nobody wants to watch a .500 team. An eight-win record means no playoff and a mediocre pick. At 5-4 without their starting quarterback, Minnesota is floating in the vast emptiness of space. Dobbs and his crew need to come full circle and land this aircraft. Failure is not an option.
