The Detroit Lions are signing veteran quarterback Josh Dobbs, according to a report from NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo. Dobbs comes into Detroit to help out their quarterback room following the sudden retirement of Teddy Bridgewater.
Dobbs is a very natural fit to join the Lions for several reasons. For one, he’s no stranger to Detroit. He spent two weeks on the Lions’ practice squad in 2022 before he was poached by the Arizona Cardinals. That Cardinals team, of course, had Drew Petzing as their offensive
coordinator at the time. Dobbs would end up starting eight games for the Cardinals in 2023, before Arizona traded him to the QB-needy Vikings midseason. Dobbs would start another four games that season in Minnesota. So Dobbs has experience with both Campbell and Petzing, which should give him a head start before joining the team in training camp shortly.
In 15 career start, Dobbs has complete 351-of-559 passes (62.8%) for 3,346 yards (6.0 Y/A), 17 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.
Dobbs will now be in competition for the backup job with undrafted rookie quarterback Luke Altmyer. The 23-year-old former Illini quarterback has been accumulating a lot of reps over the past three practices with Bridgewater out, and the Lions have been impressed with his progress.
“We like Luke, Luke is growing, Luke is getting better, he just needs reps,” coach Dan Campbell said Sunday. “I mean, he needs a million reps. But the reps that he has gotten to this point, he has improved.”
Despite just joining the team, Dobbs is likely to come in and get some playing time in Detroit’s upcoming preseason debut on Thursday against the Cincinnati Bengals. Campbell has already said they don’t play to play Jared Goff, and while they want to give Altmyer a lot of looks, giving him an entire game would be a big ask.
“Certainly Altmyer’s going to take a heavy load and then anybody else we get, we’ll get them up to speed as fast as we can and give them some reps,” Campbell said.
The Lions haven’t officially announced the move, so the corresponding transaction is currently unknown.
