What Jaguars QB and rocket scientist Josh Dobbs learned at NASA

But according to Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Josh Dobbs, it’s a lot closer than you think.

Dobbs spent a month in a NFLPA externship at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center earlier this year, and while he absorbed technical knowledge and was amazed at the innovative leaps happening every day, he also saw things that directly correlate to his sport.

While watching a live simulation of the process of loading a rocket with propellant, Dobbs said he was awed at the intricacies of the teamwork required for just one part of the totality required to launch a rocket into space. That’s no different from the process required to run one football play, Dobbs said — on a significantly larger scale, of course.

You’re in this big wide room with hundreds of monitors, and the people I was with in instrumentation take up the five monitors to the right, Dobbs said. Everyone else is working on a completely different subsystem of this rocket, and everyone has to be on the P’s and Q’s for the rocket to launch, for them to have a go for launch. So to be able to sit in there and see, OK, this correlates so much to football. You have 53 people, but everyone’s different. But everyone still has to understand their position and how it affects the big picture for something as little as a play to go right and then for the team to win.

To see the dynamics, and it kind of is good to see them not in your normal everyday world of football. You’re able to see them in a different light, so you’re able to kind of rewire your mind to be able to apply those concepts to the football world.