Late Sunday night, as my daughters attempted to unwind and fall asleep after a full summer day, I sat in their room thinking about ... quarterback depth charts?
Don't worry. I didn't incorporate them into any sort of bedtime story. Wouldn't want the girls to have nightmares thinking about what might happen if Kirk Cousins was injured.
But I did go team-by-team through all 32 NFL QB situations, the Vikings included, trying to figure out where there might be some spare depth.
This was a day after an entirely underwhelming performance by Kellen Mond and Sean Mannion in a 17-7 preseason loss to the 49ers, which was a continuation of an offseason theme interrupted only briefly by a few nice throws by Mond in the first preseason game.
The upshot: There had to be some better options, right?
As it turns out, the Vikings were doing roughly the same thing as the rest of us. And on Monday morning, they made a low-leverage deal for a more experienced and capable potential backup by trading a conditional seventh-round pick to the Raiders for Nick Mullens. He was one of the QBs I had identified, though Pittsburgh's Mason Rudolph was the most appealing potential target.
Andrew Krammer and I dissected the Mullens move and what it means on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast.
To me, it signaled a few things:
