It was a quiet move for Daniel Jones. After seeking his release from the New York Giants and getting it, he joined the Minnesota Vikings for the rest of the season. He was a practice squad player for the final weeks of the regular season, but he was activated by the team before Minnesota’s Wild Card game with the Rams.
This was both the team’s choice and his, but if he had remained on the practice squad, he would have had a two-month jump on free agency over the other quarterbacks. Instead, he remains Vikings property and will stay within the organization until March 12, the start of free agency.
The Vikings may just decide to keep him and have him serve the same role that Sam Darnold did a year ago.
General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell would like to see J.J. McCarthy take over as the team’s starting quarterback. However, they don’t know that he will hit all the benchmarks in terms of preparation or health to be ready to serve as the team’s QB1 beginning with Week 1 in the 2025 season.
As a result, they need to have a veteran quarterback on hand who has had at least some semblance of success in the NFL. If O’Connell could work with Darnold and turn him into one of the better quarterbacks in the league last year, couldn’t he do the same thing with an athlete like Jones?
Jones tore it up in the playoffs against the Vikings
O’Connell probably does not need much convincing. He saw Jones’ best performance in the NFL first hand. When the Vikings made the playoffs in the 2022 season as the NFC North division champions, they drew the New York Giants in the Wild Card game.
The Giants had to go on the road to U.S. Bank Stadium and face a hostile crowd. What they did not have to face was a hostile defense. While Kirk Cousins and the Vikings offense had been very successful in ’22, the defense was one of the worst in the league. Jones had nothing to fear against the Vikings defense, and he had no problems tearing the Vikings apart that afternoon.
He completed 24 of 35 passes for 301 yards with 2 touchdowns and no interceptions. Jones also carried the ball 17 times for 78 yards and was a legitimate threat every time he decided he had to get on the move and leave the pocket.
Jones has been with the Giants for six seasons since the team drafted him with the sixth pick in the first-round out of Duke in 2019. His passing numbers are better than most observers think as he has never completed less than 61.9 percent of his passes in any of his years with New York.
He has thrown for 14,582 yards with 70 TD passes and 47 interceptions. If O’Connell could work with Darnold — who also had six years of experience prior to signing with the Vikings — he should also be able to find success working with Jones.
That’s the logical perspective. While Jones looks decent on paper, he has been skittish for the majority of his career with the Giants. If it’s simply a matter of finding a head coach and legitimate quarterback guru who believes in him there’s no reason Jones can’t be successful with the Vikings. But if Jones has been damaged by all the criticisms he has received and the big hits he has absorbed, O’Connell could have a problem with him.
That brings us back to Darnold. The ideal scenario for the Vikings would be using the franchise tag on him and trading him for 2025 draft picks. Teams don’t always want to try to outbid opponents in free agency. Sometimes they would rather pay the price in the form of a trade to get their hands on their next quarterback.
Adofo-Mensah will have plenty of opportunity to determine which teams are truly interested in bringing Darnold aboard this week at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. If he can find more than one trade partner, he might be able to wrangle a pair of high draft picks – a second- and third-rounder – for Darnold.
That would be the ideal scenario for a team with just 3 picks in the upcoming draft. All they have is a first-round selection and two fifth-round picks.
If not, they would get a compensatory draft choice after they watch their ace in the hole walk away from U.S. Bank Stadium.
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