Josh Dobbs had his moment with the Minnesota Vikings and is now off to the NFC West and the San Francisco 49ers.
Dobbs’ agent Mike McCartney, who also represents Kirk Cousins, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on March 18 congratulating Dobbs for agreeing to terms on a one-year deal with the 49ers.
The veteran journeyman quarterback was an NFL darling for several weeks after arriving in Minnesota at the trade deadline. Dobbs came off the bench in a Week 9 matchup with the Atlanta Falcons and led a miraculous comeback victory with little knowledge of the Vikings playbook.
An exciting dual-threat quarterback, Dobbs defeated the New Orleans Saints in the following week before coming back down to earth with back-to-back losses to the Denver Broncos and Chicago Bears. Kevin O’Connell benched Dobbs in favor of Nick Mullens in the fourth quarter of a 3-0 win against the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 14.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that Dobbs will receive $2.25 million guaranteed with an additional $750,000 in playing time incentives — likely not enough for the Vikings to receive a compensatory draft pick.
Josh Dobbs Gave the Vikings Hope After Losing Kirk Cousins
The Vikings’ 2023 season was an emotional rollercoaster. Starting the year 1-4, the Vikings had already dug themselves a deep hole that few teams have crawled out of and made a postseason appearance.
Then Cousins put forth one of the best games of his career, throwing for 378 yards in a win over the 49ers despite losing Justin Jefferson to injury the previous week. Cousins was playing at a high level before suffering his Achilles injury in Week 8 against the Green Bay Packers — a 24-10 victory that brought the Vikings back to .500 just two days before the trade deadline.
With no Jefferson or Cousins, the Vikings could have accepted it wasn’t their season and traded off some assets. Instead, they opted to push forward — and Dobbs gave the team and fan base new life with his spot-start victory in Atlanta.
It was a short ride of success with Dobbs, who after throwing for 426 yards and three touchdowns and adding 110 yards and two touchdowns on the ground in his first two games, came crashing down. He turned the ball over six times in two straight losses before the bye week.
But the team had bought in at that stage of the season as the Vikings were vying for a playoff spot through the final weeks of the year despite missing Cousins and Jefferson for the majority of the season.
Dobbs Showed That the Vikings Can Still Thrive Without Cousins
The Vikings learned a lot in the final half of the season, namely O’Connell’s ability as a quarterback whisperer being on full display in the win over Atlanta.
His ability to communicate the play design, progression concept in realtime before each play helped Dobbs do the unimaginable.
The magic wore off in the following weeks, but O’Connell’s scheme continued to be productive despite a struggling running game. Mullens threw for over 400 yards twice in the final four weeks of the season.
And while there was some scrutiny of why O’Connell didn’t tailor a game plan that better fit Dobbs’ mobility, wholesale changes to the offense couldn’t be made midseason.
But the one takeaway from the Dobbs experience is that he helped the Vikings discover that there is life after Cousins.
