When the Pittsburgh Steelers selected QB Josh Dobbs in the fourth round of the 2017 NFL Draft, they had an entrenched starter in Ben Roethlisberger. While Roethlisberger was nearing the end of his career, there wasn’t much of an expectation for Dobbs to become Roethlisberger’s successor, especially after the team drafted Mason Rudolph in 2018. It doesn’t seem as if the Steelers had much of a plan for Dobbs’ development, either.
In an article by Ty Dunne of Go Long! diving deep into the New England Patriots under head coach Mike Vrabel and their development of QB Drake Maye, Dobbs, who’s currently the backup to Maye, talked about how he’s been with teams where he had “no clue” what he was being asked to do.
“So I’ve seen it both ways. I’ve shown up to work and I had no clue what I was being asked to do. And I’ve been in a place where you’ve had to come in as a quarterback and it’s like, ‘Here’s a game plan, here’s a script.’ You’re figuring out your reads and your footwork and it’s trial by error. There’s no framework of what you’re trying to get done as an offense. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. That’s not enjoyable,” Dobbs said.
“I want to know the why. I want to know why and how we’re attacking them. You just want reasoning. As I said, I’ve seen the exact opposite of the coin.”
Dunne wrote that Dobbs was referencing his time backing up Roethlisberger with the Steelers, where Dunne said Dobbs “felt left astray.”
“As in, Pittsburgh. When Dobbs backed up Ben Roethlisberger, he felt left astray. Lines got blurred. He had no clue what the timing, rhythm and spacing of plays was supposed to be. By then, Roethlisberger had already been through the ringer and was doing his own thing. Dobbs could learn from watching but also remembers asking himself all the time Is that right? Is that wrong?”
Dobbs’ rookie season was the last with Todd Haley as Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator. Randy Fichtner assumed the role from 2018 to 2020. Dobbs was also with the Steelers in 2021 during his second stint with the team, Matt Canada’s first season, but he was on IR for the entire season.
The Steelers offense was never a particularly good one with Fichtner, the team’s quarterbacks coach when Dobbs was drafted before being elevated to offensive coordinator. It just sounds as if the Steelers never put in the time to work with their young quarterback in Dobbs and try to develop him as well as they could’ve. Roethlisberger was already established at the time, and instead of being detailed with Dobbs, he was thrown into the fire to try and figure things out on his own without much instruction.
It highlights a broader issue with quarterback development in Pittsburgh. While Rudolph has remained in the league and was instrumental in the Steelers’ making the playoffs in 2023, the team failed to develop Kenny Pickett, albeit with Canada at the helm of the offense. Canada was a quarterbacks coach for the Steelers during Dobbs’ second stint with the team, and Dobbs’ criticism about not knowing the “why” is one that we’ve heard about Canada before.
TE Jace Sterberger, who spent time with Pittsburgh’s practice squad, said in 2023 that there was no “why” as to what the Steelers were doing.
“Going to Pittsburgh was harder to learn,” he said. “Because I’m like, ‘Why are we doing this? What’s the reasoning behind it?'”
Dobbs obviously didn’t call out anyone specifically, so we don’t know exactly if he’s talking about one coach in particular or just the development plan as a whole. But it’s eerily similar to what Sternberger had to say about the Steelers’ offensive system, which Canada learned from under Fichtner and managed to make worse.
The Steelers are in much better hands now with Arthur Smith at the helm. But it’s certainly interesting to hear multiple former players say almost the same thing about the lack of details and planning in the Steelers’ system.
Dobbs has bounced around the league a little bit and seen quarterback development and different systems from some of the best minds in football, including Kevin O’Connell and Kyle Shanahan. Now in New England, he’s seeing Drake Maye get coached vastly differently, and in his eyes, better than he ever was in Pittsburgh. Whether his career would’ve been any different if the Steelers had been more detailed is unclear, but it’s clear that he feels he wasn’t coached as well as he could’ve been with the Steelers.
