Vikings signing quarterback Daniel Jones to their practice squad

In Daniel Jones’ last trip to U.S. Bank Stadium, he led the Giants to a wild-card playoff victory that earned him a four-year, $160 million contract and ended Kevin O’Connell‘s one trip to the postseason as a head coach.

Less than two years later, Jones informed O’Connell he’d picked the Vikings as his next destination.

The Vikings plan to sign Jones to their practice squad this week, O’Connell said Wednesday, after the Giants benched the quarterback in favor of Tommy DeVito on Nov. 18 and granted his request to be released on Nov. 22. The Vikings quickly emerged as a candidate to sign the former first-round pick for the rest of this year, in what amounts to a six-week get-to-know-you period before the team and the former first-round pick assess their options for next year.

O’Connell first met Jones in 2019, when O’Connell was Washington’s quarterbacks coach and evaluating draft prospects for a team that took Dwayne Haskins nine picks after the Giants selected Jones. He’d met Jones at the combine, attended his pro day and connected with him again on a top-30 prospect visit to Washington’s facility.

“I got a chance to talk to him for the first time Monday night, when he cleared [waivers],” O’Connell said. “He had a lot of interest, and rightly so. But Daniel chose to come here. I had some great dialogue with him the past couple days, and it was really exciting when he called and told me he was coming.”

J.J. McCarthy is the Vikings’ only quarterback under contract for 2025. If Sam Darnold leaves in free agency, the team will need a veteran quarterback to pair with McCarthy as he likely enters his first season as the starter.

Jones will be a free agent after the 2024 season as well, and could yet leave this season if a quarterback-needy team signs him to its active roster. For however long the 2019 sixth overall pick is in Minnesota, though, Jones and the Vikings get a chance to see if there’s a fit for next season.

New York had signed Jones to a four-year deal worth $40 million per season after that victory at U.S. Bank Stadium two years ago. But he tore his ACL in 2023 and got off to a rocky start in 2024 with a season-opening loss to the Vikings, when Andrew Van Ginkel picked off his screen pass and returned it for the team’s final points of a 28-6 win. Jones completed 63.3% of his passes for 2,070 yards and eight touchdowns against seven interceptions with the Giants, but the team went 2-8 in his starts.

”I’m just excited to get him here,” O’Connell said. “I think there’s a short-term and a long-term conversation going on at every position on the roster, and that’s what Kwesi [Adofo-Mensah, general manager] and his group and Rob [Brzezinski, executive vice president of football operations] and everybody upstairs does a great job. But the quarterback development side is a huge passion of mine, and I love getting opportunities to work with guys no matter what point in their quarterback journey they’re at.”

His stopover in Minnesota puts him in a quarterback room with Darnold, who used to share MetLife Stadium and the back page of New York tabloids with Jones as the subject of QB intrigue (and scrutiny) after the Jets took him third overall in 2018. Darnold played three seasons in New York and spent time with two other teams before signing a one-year, $10 million deal with the Vikings to replace Kirk Cousins as the starting quarterback this season. He’s posted his best season as a starter in Minnesota, setting a career high with 21 touchdown passes and bumping his completion rate up to 67.6% (nearly six points above his previous best) while leading the Vikings to a 9-2 start.

Darnold’s success — and the potential it brings for a multiyear deal in the spring when he is a free agent — has burnished the Vikings’ reputation as a kind of QB retreat, with a deep coaching staff to develop passers and a full complement of skill position players to work with on Sundays.

”I don’t know what it‘s like in New York, or anything like that, but for him to be able to come in here with this locker room, this coaching staff, just the organization as a whole, we’ve got great people here,” Darnold said. “I’m just excited for him to be able to join this group.”

Jones could benefit from the same infrastructure, though it’s possible he won’t have any in-game work to use as evidence that the short stay in Minnesota helped him reform his game. O’Connell said he talked to each of the four quarterbacks on the Vikings’ roster — Darnold, Nick Mullens, Brett Rypien and McCarthy — about the Jones move, which won’t bring any immediate change to the Vikings’ depth chart.

Instead, the possible path could be for him to sign a one-year deal with the Vikings for 2025 that mirrors the one Darnold signed this year, giving the team another quarterback to work with McCarthy and either back him up or take the starting job in the event he is injured or not ready to be the No. 1 quarterback after a torn right meniscus ended his rookie season in August.

O’Connell has talked frequently about how teams can bear as much of the responsibility for a quarterback’s failure as the player can; McCarthy said after the draft that all six passers taken in the first 12 picks saw the Vikings as the best possible situation for a young QB. At least for a few weeks, the coach will get a chance to work with Jones, in a relationship that could carry into 2025 if it goes well.

”He’s played a lot of football: I mean, over 70 career starts [counting postseason games],” O’Connell said. “I think all experience matters when you’re attempting to do something as difficult as playing starting quarterback at a high level. But I also think there’s a starting line in a new place; maybe he’s got some things that he’s really earmarked, that he wants to work on. I think we can find good ways to help him do that.“

For more analysis on the Daniel Jones signing, sign up for the free Access Vikings newsletter, delivered to your inbox on Friday. Got a question about the Vikings? Email it to accessvikings@startribune.com.