Niners young QB grabbing spotlight
Mullens looks to build off strong debut
The Giants’ Dalvin Tomlinson and Landon Collins both played against Nick Mullens in college, but it didn’t occur to either former Alabama standout that Monday night’s San Francisco 49ers starting quarterback was a player they’d faced before.
What Tomlinson does recall vividly from Alabama’s 52-12 win over Southern Miss on Sept. 13, 2014, is Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban chewing out the defensive tackle for failing to rip the ball out of Mullens’ hands on a potential sack fumble.
“I really don’t remember too much about it,” Tomlinson said Friday. “From what I remember, he was a good quarterback. But Saban chewed me out that game. I almost had a sack fumble that game, and [Mullens] held onto the ball, and he actually gained a yard.
“Saban, he wants the best out of all his players,” Tomlinson said with a smile. “And when he sees an opportunity for something and it’s not seized, he wants you to do a little bit better.”
Collins, meanwhile, led Alabama with 12 tackles that day against Southern Miss, but when asked Thursday what he knew of Mullens, Collins at first said: “Not much, honestly.”
Once he realized Mullens had quarterbacked the Golden Eagles against Collins’ Crimson Tide four years ago, Collins did recall two noteworthy traits:
“He always got the ball out quick,” Collins said Friday, adding with swagger: “He was playing against a good defense in college, so I would do the same. But at the time, he had a great arm. He showed a great arm.”
The Giants (1-7) will need to knock Mullens, 23, an unlikely recent hero for the 2-7 Niners, off his pedestal if they hope to win coming out of their Week 9 bye.
The Niners’ third-string quarterback completed 16 of 22 passes (72.7 percent) in his NFL debut last week for 262 yards and three touchdowns.
And while he did it against the tanking Oakland Raiders, the Giants are showing him the same kind of respect they would to Niners blue-chipper Jimmy Garoppolo (out for season with a torn ACL) or even to second-stringer C.J. Beathard (out with a wrist injury), who beat Eli Manning head-to-head on this same field last year.
“He’s handled it fine,” Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said of Mullens on Thursday.
A few weeks ago, Giants rookie QB Kyle Lauletta was thought to be the third-string quarterback that might make waves in this game, given that Pat Shurmur will evaluate him at some point in the second half of the season to determine the Giants’ future at the position.