Once the Atlanta game was over, the coaching staff turned the page to install a full gameplan for Dobbs.
EAGAN — The night before one of the most memorable games of the Minnesota Vikings coaching staff’s careers, quarterbacks coach Chris O’Hara got together with Josh Dobbs in the team hotel in Atlanta to go over a few things about the offense just in case he had to get into the game. He had spent most of the week preparing Jaren Hall to make his first NFL start, which was a pretty unique task in comparison to working with Kirk Cousins, who had made 145 starts. Dobbs mostly worked with assistant quarterbacks coach Grant Udinski throughout the week as the journeyman tried to get acclimated to his surroundings. O’Hara figured he should steal a few minutes with Dobbs, even if they were hoping he wouldn’t be called upon.
The catch-up session proved to be worthwhile as Dobbs entered the game on the third drive and — after a rough start — ended up leading the Vikings to a stunning victory over the Atlanta Falcons. O’Hara describes it as “surreal” for Dobbs to have led a game-winning drive despite having to learn the offense on the fly through his headset during the game.
But they understood that the Atlanta game was an aberration. A once-in-a-decade type event. In the Not For Long football world, the comeback against the Falcons would have been quickly forgotten had the Vikings not followed it up with another strong performance.
In his first start at US Bank Stadium, Dobbs went 18-for-22 passing in the opening 30 minutes against the tough New Orleans Saints defense and walked into the locker room with a 24-3 lead at halftime. Ultimately the Vikings held on to win 27-19 and now sit in the driver’s seat to reach the playoffs.
So how did the coaching staff go from panic mode in Atlanta to getting Dobbs ready to start against New Orleans despite him still not knowing the full offense?
That started with the mindset of flipping the switch back to doing business as usual and treating the Saints week like it was any other normal build up to a home game in the middle of the season. The idea was that if they took the approach of paring things down for Dobbs that he wouldn’t be able to benefit from the full breadth of the scheme, which has routinely found ways to get receivers (and tight ends) open.
“We always fight the balance of making it comfortable with the quarterback but also the best plays possible for the team,” O’Hara said. “The best thing possible for the quarterback is when we can scheme it open and the receiver is wide open. That’s comfortable no matter what scheme. When you have a guy in open space, that’s comfortable. We generally don’t sacrifice a whole lot.”
On Monday the staff went through the Atlanta game and looked for everything they could build upon with Dobbs. Which details did they need to focus on with him going into his first start? Meanwhile the quarterback spent Monday familiarizing himself with the Saints defense, looking at their personnel and got a feel for the scheme that he would be attacking. O’Hara found some extra time to talk to Dobbs about some of the base elements of the offense that wouldn’t exactly be in the gameplan but he still needed to know.
