Jags quarterback Joshua Dobbs worked externship with NASA

[Jaxson De Ville]

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Jaguars backup quarterback Joshua Dobbs hasn’t been able to busy himself with OTAs this offseason.

So he worked at NASA instead.

Via Paul Myerberg of USA Today, Dobbs took advantage of the short window between the Super Bowl and the coronavirus outbreak lockdowns to work a three-week externship with the space agency at Kennedy Space Center.

“When you get down there and you see how intelligent people are and how hard they work, just what they are even talking about and are able to pull off, it’s truly amazing,” Dobbs said. “It was so specialized.”

Dobbs isn’t just some visitor, he graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in aerospace engineering — making him an actual rocket scientist. He was contacted by fellow Tennessee grad Scott Colloredo, NASA’s deputy director of engineering about the program.

“The fact that in his spare time he had the interest and the ability to come work for NASA, we’re very impressed with him,” Colloredo said. “It was pretty unique. But let’s face it: Josh, his approach and the way he’s going about parallel activity between the NFL and becoming an aerospace technologist, that’s pretty unique.”

Dobbs was placed with Exploration Ground Systems, or EGS, which works with launching rockets for both government and commercial launches. Specifically, he worked with the instrumentation department, working on NASA’s mobile launcher, though he dipped into a number of other projects.

“It felt like every part of Kennedy Space Center kind of wanted to show me what was going on,” Dobbs said. “Every single day was different, so I got a chance to learn kind of the ins and outs, everything that goes on, and how everything comes together to support the rocket on launch day.”

They’re already talking about a return, and NASA is trading on Dobbs’ status as a football player to use him for recruiting efforts.