![[Credit: Taylor Smith]](https://www.flyingmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Josh-Dobbs_Photo-Rights-Expire-03_12_2027-20.jpg)
Most professional athletes talk about life after football in vague, distant terms, something they’ll figure out when the time comes. Joshua Dobbs is unlike most professional athletes.
The 31-year-old NFL quarterback, now entering his 10th professional season, holds an aerospace engineering degree from the University of Tennessee, has interned at NASA, runs a STEM-focused charitable foundation, and recently completed his private pilot license in a Cirrus SR22. He’s now weeks away from his IFR check ride. For Dobbs, post-football goals are as important to his career as his tenure as a professional athlete.
In a recent sit-down interview with Cirrus, Dobbs traced the arc from a childhood fascination with airplanes to the realities of managing a professional football career, a foundation, a growing list of public appearances, and the training demands of becoming an instrument-rated pilot. He does it all in the same week, often on the same day.
“I am an athlete, philanthropist, engineer,” Dobbs said. “But I would say first of all I’m a problem solver. That’s what I love to do.”
That identity runs through virtually every dimension of Dobbs’ life. It shaped his decision to pursue one of the most demanding academic programs at Tennessee while starting as a quarterback in the SEC. It drove him to intern at NASA during an NFL offseason, and it’s what ultimately pushed him from years of casual interest in aviation into the left seat of a Cirrus.
Dobbs grew up in Alpharetta, Georgia, as an only child of two only children. His parents responded by signing him up for everything: band, chess club, orchestra, choir, football, baseball, and basketball.
“They wanted me to enjoy sports, enjoy competing, enjoy making friends outside of school,” Dobbs said. “But they also wanted me to have passions and interests within school so that I could go and follow my dreams in those worlds.”
Aviation entered the picture early. A family trip to Kennedy Space Center at age 7 during the peak shuttle era lit the fuse. But it was a Tuskegee Airmen summer camp in Atlanta during middle school that cemented the trajectory. The program included visits to Delta Air Lines’ headquarters at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL), a tour of the air traffic control center and, at the end, a discovery flight around the Atlanta area.
“I remember sitting in the cockpit and thinking about how cool it was,” Dobbs said. “I love to fly. I love airplanes. I love how they work, why they work. I love their applications. And I thought it’d be really cool to learn how to fly one day.”
That day arrived in spring 2024. Dobbs was spending time in San Francisco with the 49ers, and a connection who had previously worked at Cirrus pointed him toward JATO Aviation in the Bay Area, a flight school that trained exclusively in Cirrus aircraft.
California’s Bay Area environment turned out to be an ideal proving ground. Training out of Palo Alto and San Carlos (both located under the KSFO Class B and the San Jose Class C airspace), Dobbs was immediately immersed in congested airspace, short runways, and variable wind conditions.
“I signed up to start my private pilot’s license. It was a little nerve-racking at first, to be honest, as anything is when you start something new,” Dobbs said. “But after more and more reps and more training sessions, I just continue to fall in love with it.”
He completed his private pilot certificate during his time in California and has since transitioned to instrument training at Cirrus’ facility in McKinney, Texas.
The practical payoff has been immediate. Dobbs described a recent weekend that captured exactly why personal aviation matters to someone managing his kind of schedule. He flew from McKinney to Knoxville, Tennessee, for the ASTROrdinary Dobbs Foundation’s fifth annual golf classic. On April 11, he flew down to Augusta for the Masters (an hour flight), then returned to Knoxville that evening. On April 12, he flew up to Bristol to serve as honorary starter for the Food City 500 NASCAR race, marking the 10th anniversary of Tennessee’s Battle at Bristol football game. Then he flew home to Texas.
“It’s allowed me to be in three to four different locations all within a weekend with less than an hour’s flight time to get to each destination,” Dobbs said. “That would be a several-hour drive and honestly would not allow me to accomplish all the things I was able to do [that] weekend.”
On another occasion, he started his day with a workout in Dallas, flew the SR22 to Florida’s Space Coast to watch the Artemis II launch, then later took students from the ASTROrdinary Dobbs Foundation to the premiere of the film Project Hail Mary before flying to New York for the actual red-carpet event the following day.
“Learning how to fly, especially in the Cirrus, has been tremendous for opening new opportunities for me to grow myself, grow my brand, grow my foundation, but also stick to what’s first and train to be the best football player I can be right now,” Dobbs said.
Dobbs sees significant crossover between operating as an NFL quarterback and as a pilot in command, and he’s been deliberate about leveraging the parallels.
“When you play quarterback, your coach recites a long play in your ear, and you have to recite it back to your teammates perfectly, so everyone knows what they’re doing,” Dobbs said. “Then you have to go execute the play. Especially in IFR training, it’s the exact same thing with your flight plan.”
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The parallels extend beyond communication. Both roles demand extensive pre-work (studying weather and airports in aviation, studying defensive tendencies and schemes in football), and both place singular responsibility on one person’s shoulders.
“When you’re flying, especially when you’re the pilot in command, it’s on you, right?” Dobbs said. “Your fiancée’s in the right seat, your family’s in the back. That’s a lot of pressure on you. But when you’re playing quarterback, it’s the same thing. Everyone’s dreams, goals, and aspirations fall on your shoulders.”
He credits the discipline of flight training with making him a better quarterback. He says it makes him sharper in his study habits, more precise in his communication, and more comfortable shouldering that weight.
Dobbs was candid about one of the less glamorous aspects of becoming a pilot: convincing his family it was safe. As an only child, the stakes were personal.
The Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS®) and the Safe Return™ Emergency Autoland capability in the SR Series G7+ gave his parents the reassurance they needed. Dobbs described his parents as self-directed researchers who dove into every corner of available information on Cirrus safety systems once they had a reason to care.
“At the end of it, they’re like, ‘OK, yeah, we love that plane. We’re excited for you,’” Dobbs said. His father has since joined him on several flights. “He sits over there, eats his Chick-fil-A. He looks out the window. He’s spectating. He even helped me find an airport one time as we were flying over one.”
Dobbs isn’t ready to define his aviation endgame, but he has plans to continue his dedication to the aviation world.
“I have some unique thoughts on the aviation business,” he said. “I love the logistics of how sports teams travel. I love personal aviation and the idea of managing a fleet of Cirrus SRs. And I also think there’ll be a cool way to loop in the ASTROrdinary Dobbs Foundation by giving students the opportunity to learn how to fly.”
For now, the IFR check ride is the next milestone. After that, the map keeps expanding. Dobbs knows the feeling well. It’s the same one he’s chased since he was 5 years old, lining up at left guard in tackle football he didn’t know he’d signed up for, figuring out on the fly what comes next.
“When you accomplish a dream, a goal, whatever it is, I think it should propel you to your next opportunity,” Dobbs said. “Being able to look back on my past and see the things that I’ve done really excites me for the future.”
