Rookie quarterback Kellen Mond won’t be seeing any action in Sunday’s season finale against the Chicago Bears.
His name topped a list of seven inactive players, including Mackensie Alexander, Kris Boyd, Wayne Gallman, Zach Davidson, Wyatt Davis and Michael Pierce.
Mond’s name has been the subject of conversation throughout the week after coach Mike Zimmer seemed disinterested in giving him reps in the finale.
With the Vikings’ postseason hopes already dead in the water, most expected Zimmer would lead with his young quarterback for further evaluation of his development in an actual game situation.
However, the long-tenured head coach was quick to shoot that scenario down on Friday.
“I get these questions. ‘Are we going to play young guys?’ The preseason games—that’s for those guys to play,” said Zimmer. “This is a regular season game, and we’ll approach it as we would the first game of the year to the last game of the year. We grind the same. We do pretty much everything the same, other than maybe we back down a few reps, but we do that at the end of the year anyway. This isn’t the preseason. So we just go about our business like we always have.”
Zimmer’s decision to move on with business as usual could be an early indication that his time is almost done in Minnesota.
What would he need to look at the future for if there are no plans in place to make him a part of it?
