Josh Dobbs revealed he was told fake news in a meeting with head coach Jonathan Gannon.
Dobbs stunned the football world when he came off the bench for the Vikings last Sunday to lead a win over the Falcons, days after arriving with the team at the trade deadline.
The saga began earlier in the week, when Dobbs was still a member of the Cardinals.
Appearing on the “Torchbearers” Vikings fan podcast, Dobbs revealed that he had a meeting with Gannon on Monday in which the coach told him the team would be starting Clayton Tune against the Browns this past Sunday, as a way of evaluating the rookie quarterback before Kyler Murray returned from a torn ACL to resume the job.
The next day, Dobbs said that he woke up with a text from his agent saying that he could be traded that day.
This was strange to him as he had allegedly received assurances otherwise the day before.
“When I had my meeting with JG in Arizona, he looked at me in the face and he said, ‘You’re not being traded, you’re not being released, you’re gonna be here in Arizona,’” Dobbs recalled, as covered by ProFootballTalk.
Nonetheless, Dobbs got traded to the Vikings, and found himself immediately thrust into game action when quarterback Jaren Hall got hurt.
“It’s like if you were taking [Advanced Placement] Spanish all year, and you showed up and someone told you Wednesday … you have an AP French exam on Sunday,” Dobbs said after the game.
“And you’ve gotta go execute. Someone’s gonna talk to you in Spanish and translate it to the French. That’s kind of like what was going on out there.”
“There was a lot of communication, but I’m able to process a lot of information and be able to react on the fly,” he continued, even joking that he did not know his teammate’s names yet.
“That’s for next week,” he laughed.
