ESPN Turns Josh Dobbs' Success Into A Story About Race
Josh Dobbs is a unique story. Three different NFL teams (Browns, Cardinals, Vikings) have signed him this season.
He signed with Minnesota last week, took over the QB position days later, and led his team to victory in the closing moments of a matchup against the Falcons on Sunday.
It was impressive.
Yet it is his skin color that ESPN chose to focus on this week.
Some guy named Martenzie Johnson, with fewer than 900 followers on X, wrote a feature for ESPN's Andscape -- which explores the intersection of race and sports -- about how white owners have long suppressed intelligent black QBs, like Dobbs:
Per the article:
"he fact that Dobbs is a Black quarterback makes it all the more impressive.
"Not to give NFL front offices too much credit, but we’ve reached a new era in football when the Black quarterback is being called in to stabilize things. The Vikings traded for Dobbs, as O’Connell mentioned in a media availability before last week’s game, because of his experience in a variety of NFL offenses, a nice way of saying Dobbs has been signed to seven teams since 2017, four since January 2023."
We understand the point of the piece: Dobbs is smart and black and overcame systemic racism in a 70% black league.
But we don't understand the point of writing the piece.
It feels both unprompted and unnecessary.
Sure, there was a time in which teams overlooked black QBs in the NFL. It's similar to how NBA teams overlook white players with the belief they lack the raw athleticism to compete.
Yet even the author admits black QBs no longer face such scrutiny:
"Things have obviously changed over the years, with the emergence of Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson and Dak Prescott" -- all of whom received record-breaking or near-record-breaking contracts.
So, why did he write the piece with that angle?
It appears Johnson simply wanted to squeeze further juice out of an old phenomenon -- the struggles of black QBs -- and the struggles of the smart but athletically limited black QB is the best angle the site could muster.
It read that way. Johnson struggled to provide enough request examples to prove his thesis worthy.
He mentions the oft-cited fact that Ryan Fitzpatrick attended Harvard:
"Decades of research — and having two functional eyes — have found that Black athletes, particularly quarterbacks in football, are treated differently than their white counterparts. Black quarterbacks are perceived as only having success because of genetic athletic traits, such as how many Black quarterbacks are compared to Vick solely by running the 40-yard dash in less than five seconds. But for white quarterbacks, typically their success is attributed to their intelligence: How many times have you heard that former quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard?"
Johnson fails to understand why Fitzpatrick attending Harvard was so often a topic during his playing days: the rarity.
According to the Pro Football Reference, Fitzpatrick is the only QB in the database who attended the university and played in the NFL.
Harvard is not a farm system for NFL prospects. Fitzpatrick's success, despite attending an Ivy university, is what made his situation newsworthy. Not his skin color.
(I know, never let the facts get in the way of a good race bait.)
Next, Johnson says Dobbs broke barriers by proving to teams that black QBs can also be journeymen:
"Those jobs used to go to the Brian Hoyers, Jay Cutlers, and Josh McCowns of the world, but now Dobbs, Teddy Bridgewater and Jacoby Brissett are perceived as valuable backups or starting quarterbacks in the league."
Not necessarily.
There were several black QBs who concurrently served as journeymen during the time in which those three did -- including Teddy Bridgewater, Tyrod Taylor, Josh Johnson, and Byron Leftwich.
Dobbs is unique. But not because he's a black journeyman. Those are quite common.
Also quite common is the media recognizing the intelligence of black QBs, which Johnson tried to dispute:
"As a Black QB, intelligence being publicly recognized is rare in sports. "
Anscape itself begs to differ. In 2018, the site raved about how "smart" Deshaun Watson was. Over 20 women have since accused Watson of sexual harassment and assault.
National and local media have praised Patrick Mahomes' "brilliance" since he arrived in the NFL.
"He’s very very smart. He’s got a photographic memory,” Kliff Kingsbury, Mahomes’ coach at Texas Tech, told Fox34.com in 2020.
Russell Wilson was also known for how sharp he was coming into the league. So was Josh Freeman. And Bryce Young.
Of course, we are cherry-picking specific players. But to dissolve an entire article of cherry-picked examples, you have to apply the same practice.
Ultimately, the article doesn't add, well, anything of substance to the conversation. Dobbs' skin color is not relevant to his story.
Discrimination against black QBs is no longer a thing. It hasn't been in decades.
You'd think that'd be universally recognized as a positive. Yet it's not.
See, the mitigation of racial biases within the QB room has left certain journalists without the easiest, most readily available talking point: the NFL is racist.
ESPN built an entire website around race. There is a demand to write about racism. But there is so little supply.
Such a conundrum forces the editorial team to often reach for examples of racism or even create them out of thin air.
Martenzie Johnson chose the latter.
ESPN framed the story as a celebration of Josh Dobbs' success. In actuality, the story is an exploitation of his success.