Minnesota Vikings Fall to .500, Invite Quarterback Questions

The shine has worn off of Joshua Dobbs. The season might be recoverable, but whether that recovery includes Dobbs has been made an open question by the team.

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

The Vikings lost 12-10 in an unentertaining, low-scoring affair against the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, a game that had been eligible to be flexed out weeks ago but somehow never was. ESPN took on the consequences of that decision to air a game characterized more by tepid offense and blown chances than anything else.

It was the lowest-scoring Monday night game since 2018. The Vikings were inept on offense and the Bears were sloppy on defense, producing one of the saddest push-pulls in football. The Vikings took 11 third down snaps on offense, producing two first downs by advancing the ball and two more by penalty.

Vikings playcalling didn’t help matters, metered by odd moments of aggression and conservatism at points. The offense seemed entirely out of sorts and Joshua Dobbs’ four interceptions aggravated things.

Observation courtesy of Eric Thompson

Joshua Dobbs' Performance Invites Questions

What’s absolutely crazy about Dobbs’ dreadful performance is that he was largely pretty good at getting the ball to his receivers and hitting them in the hands.

By the end of the game, he had completed 73.3 percent of his passes with an expected completion rate of 70.8 percent despite at least three passes that were good enough to be caught but were simply dropped.

That’s not the same as saying he played well – he didn’t. Despite the fact that two of the interceptions credited to him weren’t his “fault,” he benefited from a dropped pick that was absolutely on him that could have gone for six the other way.

He got the ball to his receivers, but he wasn’t necessarily accurate. Bad ball location was present throughout the game, and though he did have some fine moments – like a threaded pass to Addison (turned into a pick) early in the game, a back-shoulder pass to Brandon Powell on a slot fade and a deep curl on the numbers for T.J. Hockenson for the game’s lone touchdown – the down-to-down consistency wasn’t there.

Ball location was partially to blame for a failed fourth-down conversion to Hockenson and a missed deep shot to Addison. This made some genuinely easy catches difficult and made throws that would otherwise be successes become failures.

But Dobbs didn’t play as poorly as the box score indicates. He was a high-variance backup quarterback that hit the lower range of his possibilities and had some bad luck make poor play look worse. This isn’t like the worst of the Christian Ponder era or the short-lived Josh Freeman era. It just was backup quarterback play.

Consider this: Dobbs finished his Monday night performance with a higher passer rating than Freeman did in his Vikings debut despite throwing three more picks.