Nick Mullens became the fourth quarterback to start a game for the Vikings on Saturday and he had ups and downs in the 27-24 loss to the Bengals.
Mullens threw for 303 yards and two touchdowns, but he was also picked off twice and he failed to convert a pair of quarterback sneaks for first downs in overtime before the Bengals won the game on an Evan McPherson field goal. It appears that the good outweighed the bad, however.
Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that the Vikings are expected to stick with Mullens for next Sunday’s game against the Lions, which makes sense given head coach Kevin O’Connell’s postgame comments about the quarterback.
“I think the biggest thing is Nick showed he can execute our offense and, really, move the football team. I think what we’ve gotta continue to work through are those plays where we don’t try to do too much,” O’Connell said, via the team’s website. “We’ll evaluate it, but he did a lot of good things today. I liked the feel of both our run game and pass game, how it was kind of working together. But we’ll take a look at it, watch the film and make a decision moving forward.”
The Vikings are one of four 7-7 teams in the NFC and that number will grow to five if the Seahawks beat the Eagles on Monday night, so there’s little margin for error for Minnesota in the final weeks of the regular season. That’s not an ideal position to be in with your fourth starting quarterback of the year, but it’s the one the Vikings are in and it looks like they’ll be counting on Mullens to guide them through it.