With J.J. McCarthy now set to miss his rookie season after undergoing knee surgery, Sam Darnold is in place as Minnesota’s QB1.
That also means Nick Mullens is now back in line to be the Vikings’ QB2.
Mullens, 29, started three games for Minnesota last year after Kirk Cousins went down with a torn Achilles. The Vikings went 0-3 in those games, but Mullens completed 68 percent of his throws for 1,306 yards with seven touchdowns and eight interceptions in five total appearances.
In his Wednesday press conference, head coach Kevin O’Connell noted his comfort level with Mullens as the team’s backup.
“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. “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.”
Since entering the league as an undrafted free agent in 2017, Mullens has appeared in 29 games with 20 starts for the 49ers, Browns, and Vikings. He’s completed 66 percent of his career passes for 6,391 yards with 34 touchdowns and 31 interceptions.