Philadelphia Eagles: Who in the heck is Nick Mullens?

Should the Philadelphia Eagles be worried about Nick Mullens?

Welp, for the fourth straight week, the Philadelphia Eagles are about to, um treat fans in the City of Brotherly Love to some good old fashion NFL football.

Is treat the right word there? Is three and a half hours of an anxiety-enduring stress fest really a treat, or some weird, generational curse that keeps lifelong fans coming back for a weekly dose of disappointment?

*sigh* I digress.

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So naturally, when the Eagles are set to make their first cross-country trip of the season, to the beautiful vermilion coast of the Bay Area, fans are going to fret about the prospects of being one of the few NFL teams to start out the season 0-3-1 and yet somehow only be a half-game back from first place in the division.

But wait a gosh darn second? Did you see the NFL Network’s graphic quasi-shared by ESPN’s Matthew Berry? Who exactly is going to be under center for the San Francisco 49ers? That isn’t the perfectly sculpted scruff of one Jimmy ‘G’ Garoppolo standing between Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers.

Who the heck is Nick Mullens? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Measuring in at 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, Mullens is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, and the winner of the Gatorade Player of the Year award for his masterful senior season as the starting quarterback at Alabama’s Spain Park High School. Though this didn’t suddenly vault Mullens onto the national stage and into the recruiting crosshairs of the best teams college football has to offer, it did get him offers from Jacksonville State, UAB, Murray State, and his eventual landing spot, Southern Mississippi State.

Despite having to bide his time through the first six games of his freshman season on the sidelines, Mullens eventually was named a starter for the Golden Eagles in the seventh game of the 2013 season and retained that title for the final 41 games of his career. Mullens broke the team’s longstanding losing streak, got Todd Monken a job as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator in 2016, and broke pretty much every passing record in Southern Miss’ history.

Do you know who held many of those honors before Mullens? Yeah, that’d be none other than NFL Hall of Famer/Copper Fit hawker Brett Favre.

Though Mullens wouldn’t also find himself a second-round pick when his career at Southern Miss came to an end, he did find a home in the NFL as a UDFA with the San Francisco 49ers under *dun dun dun* Chip Kelly. Wait, that isn’t right. Kelly was fired by the Niners in 2016, and Kyle Shanahan was hired in 2017. *phew* glad we didn’t have to talk about that guy again.

Slotted in as the 49ers’ fifth quarterback behind Jimmy G, Brian Hoyer, Matt Barkley, and 2017 third-round pick C.J. Beathard, Mullens was waived not once, but twice by the Niners in both 2017 and 2018, before finally earning a spot on the 53 man roster when Garoppolo went down with a season-ending ACL tear. Initially slotted in as the team’s primary backup behind Bethard, Mullens eventually supplanted the former Iowa Hawkeye as a starter Week 8 due to a poorly-timed wrist injury and finished out the season with a 3-5 record as a starter.

Fun fact: C.J. Bethard was actually drafted before his college teammate George Kittle, which means many viewed him as a better prospect than the lumbering signal-caller. Crazy.

Once Garoppolo returned to action for the 2019 season, Mullens returned to the sidelines as the team’s top backup over Bethard. He appeared in one game for the Niners in 2019 and wouldn’t earn another start until Week 3 of the 2020 season, where Mullens once again took over for an injured Garoppolo.

And hey, guess what? Mullens played well in that game too.

Facing off against a hapless New York Giants team, Mullens completed 25 of his 36 passes for 343 yards and a touchdown in route to a massive 36-9 Week 3 win. Though again, Mullens was literally playing against the Giants, that didn’t spot outside observers from gushing about the 25-year-old’s performances – with some going so far as to suggest he should start for the team even after Garoppolo returns to full strength. Per John Lynch, the team’s GM, that probably isn’t going to happen, but hey, another massive outing against the Eagles’ depleted secondary certainly won’t hurt his case moving forward.

Next. Jim Schwartz’s defense is just too inflexible. dark

Nick Mullens is a modern-day game manager who completes an average of 65 percent of his passes, makes the correct reads more often than not, and most importantly of all, doesn’t try to force his passes into overly tight windows. Is that enough to beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a near-must-win Week 4 contest? For the sake of our fair city’s sanity I hope not, but *clenches teeth* I’m not sure if I can say so definitively with a straight face.

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