Joshua Dobbs has had an interesting and circuitous journey since being drafted in the fourth round of the 2017 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Starting as a third-stringer, he won the backup job in 2018, then was traded for a fifth-round pick a year later. After being waived at the start of the 2020 season, Pittsburgh brought him back as the number three.
They even managed to use him in the regular season finale when Ben Roethlisberger was being rested. Mason Rudolph started, but Dobbs came on for several plays in situational football to run the offense, a read-option run that was at times successful.
The success of that package led to speculation that they might continue to use it in the postseason. That didn’t happen—he was inactive—of course, but now the question is whether or not he will be back in Pittsburgh in 2021, with the signing of Dwayne Haskins making that less likely. But he still has insights into the season, which he shared earlier this week on Good Morning Football.
“At the end of the day, you look back at those last six games, and we didn’t get the job done”, he said. “But when you really dive into it and take a look at the opponents, we had to play the Browns two times during that stretch. Five of the six teams are in the playoffs; a couple of them are still playing, with the Bills playing this upcoming weekend. And then the last team, the Bengals, who’s a division opponent, it’s always difficult in the NFL. It’s difficult to beat a team once, let alone twice in an NFL season”.
“Some games we didn’t start fast enough, we let them jump out to a lead and we were playing catchup”, he added. “Then other games we just didn’t take advantage of complementary football and the opportunities that presented itself to win the game down the stretch”.
He called them learning points for the team, “opportunities where we can grow and get better, and they’ll fuel us throughout the offseason to come back, hit the ground running”.
Again, whether or not he will be a part of that conversation remains to be seen. As it stands, he is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent at the start of the new league year in March, and now Pittsburgh already has three quarterbacks under contract.
