What will the Vikings do at backup quarterback?

Last night, I sat down with our friend Larry Deal from the Bears Talk Underground podcast as part of his series of season previews of Chicago’s opponents for this year. The episode will be out next week, but part of the interview we did has my mind wondering a bit.

Not “wandering,” though my mind does plenty of that on its own.

We started talking about Kellen Mond and the rest of the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback situation, and we wondered whether or not Mond would be the backup this year. Something in my brain told me that the Vikings had once again brought back veteran Sean Mannion and that he would be the #2 quarterback while Mond would slot in at #3. However, I went to the Vikings’ roster page and, as it turns out, the team has not brought Mannion back.

So, now I’m not really sure what the Vikings are planning on doing as far as backing up Kirk Cousins.

I think that, in a perfect world, the Vikings don’t want Mond anywhere near the field this year. They want him to hold a clipboard and wear a baseball cap and learn from the sidelines for at least a year, and maybe two. However, as it stands right now, the only other quarterbacks on the roster are the two guys that the Vikings had on the practice squad last year: Jake Browning, who the team signed as an undrafted free agent in 2019, and Nate Stanley, who they selected in the seventh round of the 2020 NFL Draft. Obviously, neither of them have any NFL experience at the present time.

I don’t know if the Vikings plan on just giving the #2 spot to Mond this season or not. I think he’s pretty solidly the second-best quarterback on the roster in terms of talent, but again, I’m not sure if the Vikings want to wind up throwing him into the fire this year. I’m also not sure if the Vikings want to give the spot to either Browning or Stanley, unless they’ve seen something from them while watching them run scout teams over the past couple of seasons.

There really isn’t a whole lot out there in terms of free agent quarterbacks, either. The team could sign someone like Robert Griffin III (though given his past history with Cousins and the recent comments he’s made about #8, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen). Mannion is still out there, so they could bring him back as well.

What do you think the Vikings are going to do with the backup quarterback spot, folks?