Chargers hand Raiders their 5th consecutive loss.
Nick Mullens, the quarterback who wore a suit to his pre-draft interview with the 49ers and wore out the Raiders in his NFL debut, makes a memorable first impression. Just ask Patrick Kellogg. In the summer of 2012, Kellogg was the just-hired athletic director at Spain Park High in Hoover, Ala., and head coach Chip Lindsey had just introduced him to the football team at the end of a practice.
As the team dispersed, only one player approached Kellogg.
“He looks me dead in the eye, shakes my hand and says, ‘Mr. Kellogg, welcome to Spain Park. I’m Nick Mullens,’ ” Kellogg said. “And I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know who this kid is, but that is a winner.’ ”
On Monday, Mullens, 23, who calls reporters “sir” and still texts Kellogg to ask permission
to use Spain Park’s weight room, will aim to deliver another start as impeccable as his manners when the 49ers host the Giants on Monday night.
There is some sense Mullensmania will be fleeting. His sensational debut in a 34-3 win came against the sleepwalking Raiders. Head coach Kyle Shanahan said Thursday that Mullens is only the starter on a “week-to-week” basis. And there is the matter of Mullens’ undersized frame (6-foot-1, 210 pounds) and underwhelming arm strength: Those are the reasons he went undrafted in 2017 and spent his first 19 games with the 49ers on the practice squad, on which he often lined up at scout-team safety and got razzed for his below-average backpedal.
Mullens did win Alabama’s Gatorade Player of the Year award at Spain Park. He won the Conference USA Player of the Year award at Southern Miss. And he led the 49ers to their most lopsided win since 2013 in his first NFL start.
That is, Kellogg’s instinct still appears accurate: The kid is a winner.
Lindsey was Mullens’ head coach at Spain Park for his final two seasons. And Lindsey was Mullens’ offensive coordinator at Southern Miss for his sophomore and junior years. Lindsey is now the offensive coordinator at Auburn, one of the Southern powerhouses that passed on a QB who weighed 188 pounds as a college freshman.
“He’s one of those guys that’s an overachiever from a physical standpoint,” Lindsey said. “He’s got all the intangibles that are sometimes hard to see and hard to measure until you get to know the kid. That was one of the reasons he ended up at Southern Miss. The SEC schools didn’t think he quite had enough arm talent and wasn’t big enough. I’m telling you, you just have to get to know Nick.”
Those who know Mullens want what he possesses to rub off on others.
In the offseason, Lindsey had Mullens speak to Auburn’s quarterbacks about his maniacal preparation during a visit to the school. At Spain Park, his former coaches asked him to deliver a speech, via video, to the team this season.
After Mullens’ first start, Spain Park strength coach Eric Gibbons sent Mullens a text that read, in part: “Men like you are the reason I coach. Keep inspiring.”
Gibbons is convinced Mullens’ first NFL start is just the beginning.
“I never want to jinx the kid, but there’s something special about him,” Gibbons said. “The way his teammates respond to him — he brings out the best in them.”
The initial response the 49ers’ top decision-makers had to Mullens last year wasn’t as positive.
Quarterbacks coach Rich Scangarello fell in love with Mullens before the 2017 draft and his passion for the unheralded prospect swayed Shanahan and general manager John Lynch. Teams can invite only 30 players to their facility for a pre-draft visit and Lynch and Shanahan agreed to become the only team to spend a top-30 visit on Mullens.
“I’ll never forget, we were giving Rich a hard time, but he felt that passionate so we said ‘OK,’ ” Lynch said on KNBR. “… And then (Nick) showed up, and Kyle and I came out of Kyle’s office and he was in the suit with no tie and he looked like he was about 15 years old. And we literally excused ourselves and we said, ‘Are you kidding me, Scangarello?’ ”
Said Shanahan, who joked Mullens, in his tan suit, resembled a candidate for an entry-level coaching job: “We thought he looked like Rich’s younger son. So we kind of gave him a lot of crap for why he liked him so much.”
Mullens’ appearance belies his toughness.
As a junior at Spain Park, he didn’t miss a game despite sustaining a severe high ankle sprain. As a senior at Southern Miss, he sustained an “exterior dislocation” of his right thumb (translation: the bone popped through the skin), but still finished a loss against TexasSan Antonio.
Mullens asked a trainer to shove the bone back in place and tape up his damaged digit, which later required five stitches. He threw a 33-yard touchdown pass after the gruesome injury.
“When I saw my bone, I was just like, ‘Goodness gracious,’ ” Mullens said last year. “It popped out of the skin, but it didn’t break. So I was fine and it all worked out.”
Said Lindsey: “He’s the toughest kid I’ve ever coached. I mean that. I know that sounds funny talking about a quarterback.”
Echoed Gibbons: “He’s the toughest SOB I’ve ever coached.”
The ultra-polite Mullens can also be a stubborn son of a gun.
As the scout-team QB, Mullens refused to follow defensive coordinator Robert Saleh’s request to throw passes that had no chance of being completed in practice. Saleh wanted the hopeless passes thrown to help his defense with timing on its zone coverages. Mullens didn’t want Shanahan wondering about his decision-making ability.
“I’m like, ‘Throw the ball,’ ” Saleh said. “And he’s like, ‘No, I can’t throw an interception. Coach will get mad at me and I’m just not going to.’ And I was like, ‘All right.’ So, it was always a battle. But he’s competitive. Guys are excited about him.”
Indeed, the 49ers clearly enjoy Mullens. In the win over the Raiders, wide receiver Pierre Garcon had his first touchdown catch since he signed with the 49ers last year. In the end zone, he handed the ball to Mullens, who had just thrown his first NFL scoring pass.
Mullens is replacing C.J. Beathard, who was a college teammate and is a close friend of tight end George Kittle. However, Kittle has been one of Mullens’ most vocal fans. Kittle has raved to reporters about Mullens’ pregame preparation and provided insight into his intensity.
In the huddle before Mullens’ second NFL snap, Kittle said the QB asked Shanahan to “just shut up” as the head coach kept talking into his one-way radio headset when he relaying a play call.
“You don’t really see that from Nick: He’s literally like the most professional person,” Kittle said. “You’ll talk to him and he’s a stereotypical QB — ‘I’m going to say A, B and C.’ And seeing that in the huddle was really funny.”
Although Gibbons expects more big games from Mullens, he wasn’t sure how many more games were in his future after he left Southern Miss.
Mullens wasn’t invited to the NFL combine and there was scant interest before the 49ers extended their invitation. Gibbons, who also works in real estate, decided he wanted Mullens back on his team if the NFL ignored him.
“I told him you always have a job with me whenever you come back here,” Gibbons said. “… I’m glad he’s not going to be doing that anytime soon.”