Sean Mannion – QB
Sean Mannion got the start against the Raiders and his play on the night made one thing abundantly clear. Sean Mannion is, and will always be, Sean Mannion.
He is a quarterback who is a statue in the pocket, won’t push the ball down the field, and misses some very easy throws. We saw all of that once again in his performance against Las Vegas.
From a statistical standpoint, Mannion wasn’t horrible. He hit 8-of-12 passes for 79 yards, no touchdowns, and no interceptions. He was sacked twice, but as mentioned above, he failed to throw the ball down the field, and he did nothing spectacular. Mannion is the definition of a vanilla quarterback, and that showed in spades in Minnesota’s first preseason game.
Mannion played the majority of the first half and then for some reason he got another series late in the game. That was an odd move by Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell because if he thought Mannion was going to suddenly perform at a higher level or provide a different result, then he must have a screw loose.
Mannion didn’t play better in his later series and he was outplayed by a large margin by Kellen Mond. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for Mannion in Minnesota because I’m not sure how many more of these disappointing performances we can take.