Former Tennessee quarterback Josh Dobbs was in Jackson this past weekend for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ annual golf tournament.
While the tournament was on Monday, Dobbs spoke at an event at Fellowship Bible Church Sunday night. And since it was Father’s Day, his father, Robert Dobbs, was on the stage with him and former local FCA director Mike Sparks.
Dobbs answered questions about his time at Tennessee, a legendary Hail Mary he threw to beat Georgia in 2016, his recruitment and his time in the NFL, which will continue this fall with the Cleveland Browns.
But a new piece of information was given to the crowd in attendance that had probably never been publicly shared before by the elder Dobbs.
When his parents signed Josh up for football his first year, he wasn’t supposed to be signed up for football.
“Before Joshua started playing sports, I knew nothing about sports,” Robert Dobbs said. “And his mother went to sign him up for soccer when he was 5, and she thought she had until we noticed that the signup wasn’t soccer. It was football, and we were too late to change it.”
It turned out that Josh loved football from the day of his first practice, and that set him on the course to play in the Southeastern Conference and eventually the NFL.
He was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2017 and has played for the Steelers, Browns and Titans.
But no matter what he accomplishes during his pro football career, Dobbs is proud to be forever connected to one of possibly the most memorable plays in the entire history of Tennessee football.
Dobbs – who grew up in Alpharetta, Ga., but was never recruited by the Georgia Bulldogs – led the Vols to an improbable win in Georgia’s Sanford Stadium in which the teams traded the lead multiple times in the fourth quarter and the game’s closing minutes as each offense hit big play after big play.
After Tennessee scored to take the lead, Georgia scored quickly, but left just enough time on the clock for a kick return and one play.
An excessive celebration penalty on Georgia and a solid return to midfield by Tennessee set the Vols up on the Georgia 40-yard line. The Vols and then-head coach Butch Jones set up a Hail Mary play that Dobbs said they worked on every week on Friday in practice the last thing before they left the field to travel to an away game or go to the hotel the night before a home game.
“We were on the right hash mark, and the play was to throw to the left side of the end zone,” Dobbs said.
The play progressed, and Dobbs threw it to the left side. A crowd of players from both teams were at the spot where the ball was landing, and Vol receiver Juwan Jennings came down with the ball to end the game and preserve the Vols’ undefeated record at that point.
Dobbs also mentioned when he was baptized when he was in high school. He said it happened the weekend they celebrated his 16th birthday a couple weeks late with a new car from his parents and the same weekend his high school basketball team won a state championship.
“With every great memory we made that weekend, all of that pales in comparison to that,” Dobbs said while looking up at the screen at Fellowship that showed a photo of him submerged in chest deep water in a baptistry with a pastor about to baptize him.
“That was the time I publicly proclaimed my faith in Jesus Christ, and at the end of the day and end of our lives is all that really matters,” Dobbs said. “He’s been faithful to me, so I aim to be faithful to Him in everything I do as a man.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
