After rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy underwent season-ending surgery earlier this week, the Minnesota Vikings will be moving forward with Sam Darnold as the team’s starting quarterback this season with veteran Nick Mullens as the backup. And it sounds like the team is pretty confident in Mullens if he is ever thrust into action.
In a recent press conference, Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell indicated that they have full faith in now-backup quarterback Nick Mullens if he ever has to fill in for Sam Darnold this season.
“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 according to Pro Football Talk. “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. 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.
“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.”
Even despite the injury to McCarthy, it seems like the Vikings feel like they’re in a good place at the quarterback position.
