In professional football, cadence refers to all of the verbal signals delivered by the quarterback before the start of the play. They include numbers, colors and other coded words quarterbacks call out to tell the offensive players to get ready for a specific play, which includes the snap count. While the quarterback uses the huddle to communicate the play, often he will have to change it at the line of scrimmage, which is called an audible.
Complicated stuff, which is why quarterbacks are generally pretty smart.
The Minnesota Vikings use five cadences to run hundreds of offensive plays, which takes days, weeks and even months for quarterbacks to learn cold. But on Sunday, the Vikings didn’t have days, weeks or months to get their backup quarterback Josh Dobbs up to speed on the cadences. In fact, they had exactly zero time to do it because Dobbs was never supposed to be in the game. The starter for Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Falcons was Jaren Hall.
Hall, a backup who was forced into duty when the starting quarterback tore his Achilles, had been the guy “getting the snaps” last week in preparation for the game. Early in the game, however, Hall suffered a concussion and had to leave the game.
That meant that Dobbs, who had received no snaps — i.e., did not touch the ball at all all week — came into the game. Dobbs is what is known in the sports world as a “journeyman” quarterback, one who makes his living more or less being passed from team to team to serve, often, as a backup to someone else. In this sense, Dobbs is a journeyman’s journeyman, having served on five teams in the past calendar year. Acquired last Tuesday from the Arizona Cardinals, Dobbs hadn’t thrown a practice pass to any of the Vikings’ receivers, nor taken a snap from center Garrett Bradbury. He admitted he didn’t even know most of the linemen’s full names.
And now the journeyman with no snaps had to go into the game and offer cadences like he’d been doing it all week.
I fervently hope one of his teammates or coaches yelled out to him, “Hey Josh, don’t worry, it’s not rocket science!” That would have been rich because Dobbs studied aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee and competed on the Engineers team at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Design/Build/Fly competition while playing football.
Anyway, Dobbs entered the game in the first quarter and went 20-for-30 with 158 yards and two touchdowns, while scrambling for 66 yards on seven carries. The Vikings won 31-28 in what Vikings center Bradbury described as “an ugly, awesome game.”
After the game, when reporters grilled him on the unusual circumstances of his heroic victory, he did something that made this football fan’s day — he offered a leadership lesson.
“In this league,” Dobbs said, “there is never an excuse for your circumstance. I learned that from [Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin]. Usually, people don’t care about your circumstances. They just want to see you succeed given the circumstances you’re given.”
On Sunday, Dobbs showed how to go from “journeyman” to “the last man standing.” He did it through:
- Good listening: Nothing messes up an offensive line’s timing as badly as a miscue between quarterback and offensive linemen. Keeping your offense in sync is rendered even harder because many quarterbacks change the rhythm of their cadence to trick the defense. While Dobbs may not have taken any practice snaps, he did get to observe and listen to how it was done as he watched Hall practice, reducing his emergency learning curve when it counted.
- Readiness: When you’re not playing, you have to find your own way to stay game-ready and fit. That Dodd clearly prioritized this behind-the-scenes and unglamorous work was evident in his well-rounded game. He not only passed for a pair of touchdowns but led his team in rushing. The key is not to “settle” for anything less than our best effort and preparation even when others are watching us.
- Mentorship: Whether or not Dobbs is a starter, he seeks out advice — and absorbs lessons — from those in a position to help him. At Pittsburgh, he learned from Super Bowl Champion and Head Coach Mike Tomlin about taking excuses out of the equation. From Hall of Fame quarterback, Peyton Manning, he learned about the “pre-snap thought process” that made Manning one of the game’s all-time greats. Do you think that came in handy on Sunday?
When you view learning and growth as your goals, the whole world looks like a classroom. That’s what I love about Dobbs.
“The same mindset that you have when you go to the classroom is the mindset you need to have in your game prep,” Dobbs told a reporter, adding, “being detail-oriented when you are trying to figure out every little clue that’s going to help you figure out a problem, on and off the field.”
Whether Dobbs takes another snap for the Vikings or some other team, or whether he returns to his journeyman role, you have to think the sky’s the limit for this rocket scientist.
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