Southern Miss fans looking for a reason to turn on preseason football Saturday afternoon have one.
Keep an eye out for No. 14 in Jacksonville.
Former Southern Miss quarterback Nick Mullens will be back inside the Caesars Superdome when the Jacksonville Jaguars visit the New Orleans Saints Saturday at 3 p.m. CT. With preseason football usually meaning plenty of snaps for backup quarterbacks, there’s a good chance Golden Eagle fans will get to see one of the best quarterbacks in school history back on a field that’s become pretty familiar to him.
And for Mullens, playing in the Superdome is nothing new. This will be his 5th time suiting up inside the Superdome in his ten year NFL career. His history in the building goes all the way back to his final game in a Southern Miss uniform.
Southern Miss faced Louisiana-Lafayette in the 2016 New Orleans Bowl, Mullens’ final game as a Golden Eagle.
He went out throwing, completing 25 of 40 passes for 346 yards, two touchdowns and one interception as Southern Miss beat the Ragin’ Cajuns 28-21.
It was a fitting ending to his Southern Miss career. Mullens left Hattiesburg with 11,994 career passing yards and 87 touchdown passes, finishing as the school’s all-time leader in both categories. He wouldn’t have to wait long to get another opportunity to play professionally.
After going undrafted in 2017, Mullens signed with the San Francisco 49ers. Two years later, his NFL career brought him back to New Orleans. The 49ers visited the Saints in December 2019 for one of the wildest games of that NFL season, a 48-46 San Francisco win. Mullens was Jimmy Garoppolo’s backup that afternoon and did not play.
A year later, however, the Superdome belonged to Mullens.
With Garoppolo injured, Mullens was San Francisco’s starting quarterback when the 49ers returned to New Orleans on November 15, 2020.
Matching up against Drew Brees in one of his final games of his career. This time, Mullen’s took nearly every snap. Mullens finished 24-of-38 for 247 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions in a 27-13 loss to the Saints.
It would be five years before Mullens returned to the Superdome again. By then, he had become one of the NFL’s well-traveled veteran quarterbacks, with stops in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Minnesota before eventually landing in Jacksonville.
Last August brought another trip to New Orleans. Mullens came off the bench for the Jaguars behind Trevor Lawrence in their preseason meeting with the Saints and put together an efficient afternoon, completing 14 of 17 passes for 112 yards, although he was intercepted once.
The game ended in a 17-17 tie. Now he’s coming back again.
Mullens in the Superdome
Saturday will add another chapter to what has quietly become a pretty long history for Mullens inside the building.
2016 New Orleans Bowl — Southern Miss vs. Louisiana-Lafayette
25-of-40, 346 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT
2019 — San Francisco 49ers at New Orleans Saints
Did not play
2020 — San Francisco 49ers at New Orleans Saints
24-of-38, 247 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2025 Preseason — Jacksonville Jaguars at New Orleans Saints
14-of-17, 112 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
And now comes 2026.
The Saints and Jaguars will meet again Saturday afternoon, this time in the opening week of the preseason. Kickoff is scheduled for 3 p.m. CT at the Caesars Superdome.
The former Golden Eagle is now one of those veteran quarterbacks NFL teams value in August — a guy who has been around, started NFL games and can step into an offense when needed.
It’s quite a career for a quarterback who wasn’t even drafted. For Southern Miss fans, that’s probably the coolest part of Mullens’ story.
His final college game was nearly 10 years ago. Think about how many college quarterbacks have come and gone since then. Think about how many undrafted quarterbacks have gotten an NFL camp invitation, bounced around for a year or two and disappeared. Mullens has kept finding a way to stick.
San Francisco. Philadelphia. Cleveland. Las Vegas. Minnesota. Jacksonville. And Saturday afternoon, Southern Miss fans can watch him do it again just 100 miles down Interstate 59 from Hattiesburg.
The uniform has changed quite a few times since that December night in 2016. The building hasn’t.
If No. 14 trots onto the field Saturday afternoon, it’ll be another chance for Golden Eagle fans to watch Nick Mullens play quarterback inside the Superdome.
Something he’s been doing, off and on, for a decade.
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