Butch Jones is in uncharted waters as he enters his third round of spring practice at Tennessee.
He has a starting quarterback.
After an open competition in his first two years, Jones is excited to start practice with a proven signal caller in hand, since rising junior Joshua Dobbs took the SEC by storm last fall.
“The great thing is, we know who our starting quarterback is and he’ll gain valuable repetitions,” Jones said in an interview with the Daily Beacon.
After struggling through much of fall camp, Dobbs seemed to be buried on the depth chart. Then senior Justin Worley tore his labrum in a loss at Ole Miss in October. Nathan Peterman, who has since transferred to Pittsburgh, started the next game against Alabama, but struggled to direct the offense over the first few drives.
Jones then turned to Dobbs midway through the first quarter, and the Alpharetta, Georgia native finished the game with 192 yards through the air with two touchdowns and 75 yards on the ground, despite the loss.
It was in his first start the next week, however, that Dobbs began turning heads. He led the Vols to an improbable comeback against South Carolina, overcoming a two-touchdown deficit with less than two minutes on the clock to win in overtime.
He finished the game with 301 passing yards and two touchdowns and broke the school record for rushing yards in a game with 166. Dobbs went on to achieve a 4-1 record as a starter last season, including a blow-out win over Iowa in the Taxslayer Bowl.
Now that Dobbs has taken hold of the starting job, he’s focusing on the leadership role that accompanies it.
“There’s always a responsibility to be a leader,” Dobbs said. “I’ve taken that responsibility upon myself to be a leader since the day I got here … My goal is to push this team and lead this team through spring and into the fall.”
The mental aspect of the game is important to every position on the field. For quarterbacks, though, the mental part of the game is just as important as the physical part, something Dobbs has no problem with.
Coaches and teammates praise the junior’s mental ability. He was originally committed to Arizona State before Jones took over at Tennessee in December of 2012. Jones quickly made the then-high school senior a high priority, gaining the cooperation of Tennessee’s engineering department to ink his signature on signing day.
Dobbs is majoring in aerospace engineering at UT and chose the Vols over offers from the likes of Duke, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
While Dobbs’ teammates see him as a leader, it’s clear the coaching staff does as well. When former offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian left for the NFL, Mike DeBord was quickly identified as the main candidate for his replacement.
When Jones sat down to interview DeBord, he brought Dobbs along with him so the quarterback could get his own impressions and even give his coach input on the hire.
“It was great,” Dobbs said. “It was great to sit down and speak with your future coach, potentially, and it was great to get in his mind and understand how he looks at football, different things and different concepts. We still talk about that first interaction today.”
For Jones, the decision to bring his quarterback in for the interview was an easy one, thanks to Dobbs’ ability in both leadership and mental aspects.
“That is the first time I have done that,” Jones said. “I thought Josh, first of all, had earned the right to sit in that interview. I wanted that feedback, as we all know Josh is very cerebral.
“I wanted his input on some of the things and I also wanted to see kind of the chemistry, the mesh that those two individuals had.”
While Dobbs is heading into his third year at Tennessee, this will be his first without Bajakian calling plays. Dobbs said the interview with DeBord allowed him to get a feel for his new coordinator, making the transition a little easier.
While the coordinator may be different, the basic idea is the same. Play fast.
“Every coach has their own style,” Dobbs said. “Overall, our offense stays the same. Same lingo and everything, and our goal is to move fast and just pump it down defenses’ throats, through the air and on the ground.”
While Dobbs’ leadership and mental characteristics are important, his physical ability should not be overlooked.
For the first time at Tennessee, Jones has a true dual-threat quarterback who can make plays with his arm and his legs, fitting Tennessee’s fast-paced spread offense.
Dobbs completed 112 of 177 passes in six games last season for 1206 yards, nine touchdowns and six interceptions. He also carried the ball 104 times for 469 yards and eight touchdowns.
His ability to make plays with his feet also helped out his struggling offensive line as he was sacked 12 times in six games while Worley was sacked 29 times in seven games last season.
“(Dobbs) does a lot of the things that we want to take advantage of from the defense,” Jones said. “We don’t ask the quarterback to hit the home run every time he runs the football. We just want an efficient run.
“When a quarterback can create plays with his legs, it adds a whole other dynamic that the defense has to be accountable for. It may not even be designed runs, it might just be scrambles.”
While Dobbs has gotten a lot of attention after his strong end to last season, he’s taking a dutiful approach to this spring practice. DeBord has already pointed out a few errors in Dobbs’ mechanics and the quarterback has been working to become more polished for the upcoming season.
“We just worked on little things,” Dobbs said. “In the pocket just not getting too wide of a base, staying narrow … That helps with throwing the ball and just staying compact in the pocket and quicker movement in the pocket.
“That’s something he came in and talked to me about from day one, and that’s something I corrected day one. As we go, obviously more things will come up, but coach DeBord, me and him have a great relationship and it’s definitely growing.”
