The Minnesota Vikings are currently reeling from the brutal injury to rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy who will be missing the entire upcoming season due to a knee injury. Looking at the rest of the position group, it looks like Sam Darnold will be the starting quarterback, but the team does feel comfortable as Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell speaks on the new backup signal-caller in Nick Mullens.
Of the three quarterbacks mentioned, Mullens does have the most experience starting for Minnesota as he was QB1 for three games last season when Kirk Cousins went down with a torn Achilles. In the eyes of O'Connell, Mullens is way more than just a “capable guy in that quarterback room” according to NBC Sports.
“I know we had some rep charters out there in this [media] group, and if you were charting, you would see that it was Sam and J.J. basically took all the reps for the better part of the last three weeks by design — knowing that Nick Mullens is a guy that in many ways, he’s not just another capable guy in that quarterback room,” O’Connell said in a press conference to the media.
Nick Mullens has traits the Vikings believe are “critical”
At 29-years old, Mullens does have a bevy of experience in the NFL as he played for the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns before coming to the Vikings in 2022. For O'Connell, he said that the Southern Miss product has the traits that he and the rest of the coaching staff believes are “critical.”
“He is providing context and experience and understanding of our offense on a daily basis that adds to [QBs coach] Josh [McCown], [assistant OC/QBs coach] Grant [Udinski], [OC] Wes [Phillips], myself, his experience last year I thought was critical,” O'Connell said. “I think he learned that he could be an explosive driver of our offense and also had some lessons of taking care of the football and trying to make sure we’re playing aggressively but not over the line to where you put the ball at risk of being turned over.”
Vikings confident in Nick Mullens, mindset is being “one snap away”
Last season, Mullens played in five games, starting three as said before, where he threw for 1,306 yards to go along with seven touchdowns and eight interceptions joining other players at his position like Jaren Hall and Joshua Dobbs. There is no doubt that Minnesota has immense trust in their backup quarterback, especially through a time with the McCarthy injury as O'Connell describes Mullens as being “a snap away.”
“I think the team’s excited about Nick because, like many of us, we’ve gone through the ups and downs, but he’s in a position to really be a guy we can rely on and be a snap away. But he’ll clearly start getting a lot more reps as we now prepare him to be ready to be one snap away.”
At any rate, the Vikings are hoping to improve after last season where they went 7-10 which put them third in the NFC North just above the Chicago Bears. Their next preseason matchup is against the Cleveland Browns on Saturday in preparation for their regular season opener against the New York Giants on the road on Sunday, Sept. 8.
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