Tennessee needs Josh Dobbs to be special against Alabama

KNOXVILLE — Josh Dobbs is returning to the setting where his Tennessee football career essentially began two years ago.

The quarterback was a skinny freshman in 2013, when he took his first snaps at Alabama in the second half with Justin Worley lost for the season after hurting his thumb in the eventual 45-10 defeat to the top-ranked Crimson Tide.

Saturday’s return for Dobbs and the Volunteers actually will be his third encounter with Alabama, though it’ll be his first as the guy for Tennessee.

When Dobbs came off the bench his first two seasons, Tennessee trailed 35-0 and 13-0, and he chuckled at the notion he’d enter the game with the score 0-0 this time around.

“We’d spotted them a few points,” the junior said Monday. “I’m just ready to go out and compete honestly. I love every game, love the opportunity to go out and compete in the SEC against the best. This is another opportunity to do that.”

As far as defenses go, Alabama is the SEC standard again this season. The Tide and their horde of future NFL players lead the league in total defense (allowing 271.9 yards per game), rushing defense, pass-efficiency defense, takeaways (16), interceptions (12) and sacks (22).

To conquer mighty Alabama, a team needs a pretty special performance from its quarterback.

The Tide have lost only 12 times since 2007, Nick Saban’s first as their coach. The opposing quarterbacks in those defeats completed 65 percent of their passes for an average of 234.7 yards with 28 touchdowns and only five interceptions. In only three of those games did a quarterback run for more than 50 yards on the Tide.

The list includes Heisman Trophy winners such as Florida’s Tim Tebow, Auburn’s Cam Newton and Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel, but the likes of South Carolina’s Stephen Garcia, the Ole Miss duo of Bo Wallace and Chad Kelly and Trevor Knight, who’s now Oklahoma’s backup, are on it, too.

Dobbs now gets another shot at joining some exclusive company.

“We talked about it yesterday in the quarterback room,” he said Monday. “You don’t have to go out there and be Hercules or anything, or be He-Man to go out and be successful. We just have to focus on the details, focus on our job of protecting the football and focus on executing the game plan. If we do that we’ll be successful.”

Tennessee will need special performances across the board – particularly on the offensive and defensive lines, where the matchup on paper looks the most unkind to the Vols – to pull the upset, but the Vols won’t win without Dobbs playing like he did against Georgia two weeks ago, when he racked up 430 yards and five touchdowns.

“Josh is one of my favorite guys on the team,” linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin said. “He’s just a talented person in life. Everything he does, it’s almost like he’s really good at it. I could tell from his freshman year to now, he doesn’t let things get in his head. He stays focused and always thinks he’s going to make a play. We trust him to win games for us.”

Dobbs was a big reason Tennessee turned a laugher into a 10-point game in the second half of last season. After Nathan Peterman played the first two series, Dobbs completed 19 of 32 passes for 192 yards with two touchdowns and one interception and added 75 yards on 19 carries. He was especially effective on third down.

“He had a good game against us last year,” Saban said. “We played the whole game against him except the first few plays, so maybe it wasn’t his team, but we had to play against him all night. He’s gotten better, and you can tell he’s got a great understanding of what the expectation is for him and what he needs to do on offense.

“It looks like he’s a very good leader. I see the players responding positively to him, and I don’t think there is any question that the guy is really playing well and has had a great year so far.”

During the current eight-game losing streak to the Tide, Tennessee quarterbacks completed less than 54 percent of their passes for an average of 179.8 yards per game and threw five touchdown passes with 10 interceptions.

Dobbs must reverse that trend for the Vols to have a chance at vanquishing the Tide.

“He grew up a lot last week against Georgia,” Vols coach Butch Jones said. “He was really holding players accountable in a very positive fashion, a very constructive fashion, which was great to see. That’s what we need from him. I thought he was in control. But that’s Josh Dobbs.

“From a leadership standpoint and a mentality standpoint, he’s done a good job of that. But I thought he took it to another level in the Georgia game. We’re going to continue to need that as the season progresses.”

Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.