Jaguars' Elevation of Nick Mullens Offers Some QB2 Intrigue Before Week 1

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Could there be some backup quarterback intrigue before the Jacksonville Jaguars kick off tomorrow?

Ahead of Sunday's Week 1 battle with the Cleveland Browns, the Jaguars have elevated practice squad quarterback Nick Mullens to the active roster to give the team likely three active quarterbacks for Week 1.

We know Trevor Lawrence is going to start, but will Mullens or Quinn Ewers be the backup and be one snap away from playing?

It appeared the Jaguars were already going to give themselves the flexibility they needed with the backup quarterback position when they signed Mullens to the practice squad after releasing him at the 53-man roster cut down day. And the only reason the Jaguars did that, of course, is because they traded with the Miami Dolphins to land Ewers.

That is exactly what the Jaguars have now put into process with Mullens elevated for the day. With three quarterbacks likely active, the Jaguars do not have to enter the game with Ewers as the technical No. 2 quarterback just two weeks after he was traded for, which the Mullens option allows them to do.

Mullens has been in the offense for two seasons now, and he has even more time spent with members of the coaching staff after his time with the Minnesota Vikings as their backup quarterback. This would naturally give him an edge over Ewers entering the week, even if the Jaguars kept Ewers on the 53-man roster over Mullens.

Ewers, of course, has been fighting the challenge of learning the insides and outs of the Jaguars' offense since they traded for him two weeks ago. Learning the offense takes time for any quarterback, let alone a second-year passer who did not even get training camp with the team.

“It is an extreme challenge for anybody to learn the offense, whether you're a quarterback or a running back or a wide receiver or an offensive lineman, to come in because you're trying to learn so much mentally," Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski said this week.

"Then be able to go out there and physically execute it when you're learning it more often than not in a classroom setting, where other guys have an opportunity when you're learning it through training camp to gradually learn it from the classroom, take it to the field, classroom to field, classroom to field, or classroom to walk through the field. Instead, you have to totally change that process to take it from all classrooms or all film study and then apply everything at once to the field. It's a unique process and it's totally different than really any other time you're learning an offense in football. Whether it's quarterback for Quinn, which we know kind of has the most to learn typically from a communication, from an identification, and really from a conceptual standpoint for him or whether it was just a running back trying to learn everything and go out there to physically execute it is a really difficult challenge.”

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