Madden Fumbles Hilariously over Josh Dobbs
Before last week’s Minnesota Vikings game, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah acquired Josh Dobbs as a backup option with Kirk Cousins going on injured reserve. What happened next was otherworldly, but the folks at EA Sports live under a rock and made that known with the latest Madden update.
Madden Fumbles Hilariously over Josh Dobbs
While EA Sports attempts to make their yearly repurpose of football action as close to lifelike as possible, the simulation experience sometimes gets lost in the ratings. Each year, Madden teases the top players at each position in the lead-up to the game’s release. Justin Jefferson joined The 99 Club for the first time this season, and he has earned the title of football’s best wide receiver.
No one in their right mind believes Josh Dobbs is a top quarterback across the league, but he stepped in with no clue what Minnesota’s gameplan looked like and orchestrated a road victory. In an effort to praise him, I guess, Madden bumped his rating up one point. He went from unusable in the game to virtually unusable. It was a weird look that they were proud of such a statement.
Upon further looking into the Dobbs rating change, things become even more questionable. While he was a 67 overall a week prior and is now a 68, that ranks him as the 43rd quarterback in the game. He is even with Detroit Lions rookie Hendon Hooker, who has yet to play in an NFL game. He is also behind complete dumpster fires like Sam Darnold and Jameis Winston.
If I recall correctly, Madden uses a multi-year evaluation period to determine overall ratings. While they change throughout the season on a weekly basis, the starting point comes from a comprehensive body of work. Dobbs doesn’t have a long track record of success, but he has also quarterbacked some terrible teams in less-than-ideal scenarios.
The comedy of this whole situation is that EA Sports was seemingly proud of the insignificant boost they provided to the Vikings quarterback and thought that it was somehow reflective of the job he did last week. For Dobbs to continue seeing ratings increases, he must perform every week. For him to reach anything close to an 80 overall, though, he might need to lead a team to the next three Super Bowls.
When Minnesota takes the field at home on Sunday, there will certainly be #15 Dobbs jerseys in the stands at U.S. Bank Stadium. That sort of fanfare isn’t something the journeyman veteran has grown accustomed to throughout his career thus far, but it’s probably a feeling he can get on board with pretty quickly.
Although the Vikings are underdogs at home, they’ll look to keep the winning ways going and extend a winning streak that has them trending back toward the playoffs. With a 1-3 home record on the season, grabbing another victory in Minnesota would go a long way to boosting the overall confidence in the staying power of this team.
Ted Schwerzler is a blogger from the Twin Cities that is focused on all things Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. He’s active on Twitter and writes weekly for Twins Daily. As a former college athlete and avid sports fan, covering our pro teams with a passion has always seemed like such a natural outlet.
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