Josh Dobbs Had No Idea He Was Getting Traded
The week leading into the trade deadline was a very crazy one for new Vikings starting QB Josh Dobbs.
Not only, did he get traded halfway across the country from the Arizona Cardinals to the Minnesota Vikings, but just four days after arriving to the team, Dobbs was thrown into the game and had to finish in relief of rookie Jaren Hall.
As it turns out, the two days between Arizona’s Week 8 game against the Baltimore Ravens and the trade deadline were even wilder for the QB. Dobbs revealed during the most recent episode of his podcast Torchbearers that he did not even know that he was being traded before Tuesday morning.
Josh Dobbs Had No Idea He Was Being Traded
Not only did Dobbs not have any idea that he was being traded, he was under the impression that he would be remaining as the starter for Arizona in Week 9. “We’re in the locker room, JG gets off his podium…and he says I’m starting for the Cardinals in Cleveland the next week,” Dobbs explained.
This was a big deal for the QB seeing as Dobbs had spent a good portion of training camp and preseason during the summer with the Browns. Then, on August 24th, he was traded to Arizona in exchange for a fifth-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
However, this is where things began changing for Dobbs. He later revealed that on Monday, just 24 hours after this statement, Gannon revealed to him that they would instead be starting rookie Clayton Tune on Sunday.
“I go into the facility on Monday, and JG…calls me into his office, and he says ‘hey, we’re going to start Clayton Tune in Cleveland’…I was upset with it, but I understood like just the situation that the franchise was in in that moment.”
Dobbs also said that during his Monday meeting with Gannon, he was told he would not be traded by the team. “When I had my meeting with JG in Arizona, he looked at me in the face and said ‘you’re not being traded; you’re not being released. You’re going to be here in Arizona.'”
Then, the QB woke up on Tuesday morning to a text from his agent suggesting that he could be traded. Hours later, Dobbs was officially traded to Minnesota, and you know how the story goes from there.
So, let’s recap. Not only did Dobbs go from being traded to a brand new team and having to play a game for them without getting any reps with the first-team offense beforehand, but in a 48-hour span, he went from being told he was starting for a completely separate team, to being benched, to potentially being traded, to actually being traded.
Luckily for the Vikings, Dobbs has taken the entire sequence gracefully, and now, he is in line to potentially start for a playoff contender for the rest of the season. Dobbs’ performance on Sunday was truly incredible, and he has a great opportunity in front of him to build off of that.
There are plenty of other ridiculous stories in this podcast from Dobbs’ juggling multiple house leases over the past couple months, to Chiefs offensive limeman Trey Smith’s trip to Germany this past weekend in Kansas City’s most recent win over the Dolphins. Be sure to go over to the podcast and watch the entire episode because it is chock-full of great content. Again, you can find the link to Torchbearers here.
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Josh Frey is a Class of 2020 graduate of The College of Idaho and managing editor of PurplePTSD.com. When he’s not writing about the NFL, Josh enjoys running, gaming, or rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks. Check out his Twitter account: @Freyed_Chicken.