It was announced on Wednesday that the Vikings were adding recently released former Giants starting quarterback Daniel Jones to their practice squad. It’s a fascinating move that raises many questions. Here at Vikings On SI, we have answers to all of them (eight, to be exact). Let’s dive in.

Jones was the No. 6 overall pick from Duke in 2019 and had no real success with the Giants. He struggled in his first few years before breaking out in the 2022 season, where he totaled nearly 4,000 yards, 22 total touchdowns and just 5 interceptions. The Giants had a 9-6-1 record that season and defeated the Vikings in a wild-card playoff game after a strong performance by Jones against a defense whose coordinator was fired four days later.

He received a four-year, $160 million extension this offseason, but played poorly in 2023 before suffering a torn ACL. While on the bench for Tommy DeVito, he struggled again for 10 games this season. Last week, Jones requested his release, and the Giants granted his request, despite eating up a lot of dead money in the process. That gave Jones the freedom to choose his next team.

For the Vikings, signing Jones is a low-risk move with some potential for upside both this season and beyond. They are signing a 27-year-old quarterback who was a top ten player with 71 NFL starts. Once he gets to Minnesota, they will begin teaching him their offense and coaching him, with the possibility that he could provide a higher floor and ceiling than Nick Mullens as a backup later this season – just in case of the falls happens to starter Sam Darnold. They can also evaluate Jones as a possible backup or stopgap option for 2025 when currently injured rookie JJ McCarthy is their only quarterback currently under contract.

It almost certainly has a lot to do with Kevin O’Connell’s reputation as a coach who develops quarterbacks. Just look at what KOC did with Darnold this year – another former top-ten pick who went out with a New York franchise. Last season, he had Kirk Cousins ​​​​playing the best football of his career before his injury and then won a few games on the fly after being traded for Josh Dobbs. O’Connell’s resume speaks for itself and he had a relationship with Jones dating back to the pre-draft process in 2019.

Jones could have gone to a bad team like the Raiders, where he would have had an immediate chance to play after Gardner Minshew’s injury. However, he reportedly wanted to sign with a rival, learn in a top football environment and have the chance to be a reserve player. The Vikings check all of those boxes. They are 9-2 and have everything a quarterback could want in terms of coaching staff, offensive talent and organizational stability. In the short term, Jones likely sees a path to replacing Mullens in the backup role. We’ll get into that in more detail shortly, but he also may see a path to staying in Minnesota next year and possibly even starting games.

Not much at all. It will be around $100,000 if he’s on the practice squad for the rest of the year, or up to $375,000 if (or when) he ends up on Minnesota’s active roster. But he’ll still be cashing big checks from the Giants in the meantime.

This is possible, but the player must agree to sign with the new team’s active roster. Jones choosing the Vikings means he wants to be there. However, as long as he is on the practice squad, he will have the flexibility to sign with another team. The only scenario where this could become relevant would be if an injury gave him a great opportunity to take a starting role on a winning team. But even then, it’s not entirely clear whether Jones wants to be thrown back into the fire any time soon. He has decided to attend O’Connell’s quarterback school, so it would be surprising if he doesn’t spend the rest of this season in Minnesota.

That shouldn’t be the case. Darnold, coming off a fantastic two-game series against the Titans and Bears, is the Vikings’ undisputed starter going forward. He was one of the top ten QBs in the league this year in passer rating, passing touchdowns, yards per attempt and PFF rating, among other things. Even when he turned the ball over six times in two games against the Colts and Jaguars earlier this month, the Vikings’ confidence in him never wavered. Unless he completely collapses three or four weeks in a row – which would be very surprising considering he’s played 11 games – there’s no situation where Darnold loses his job to Jones without getting hurt.

Definitely. The impact this has on the 2025 season should not be overlooked. Darnold, aside from a late-season collapse, played well enough to earn a sizable multi-year contract from another team in the spring. The Vikings never intended to give him this deal after this season, no matter how well he played (the possibility of Darnold coming back can’t be 100% ruled out, but remains highly unlikely). But they still need a quality backup or insurance option to partner with McCarthy, especially with this year’s No. 10 overall pick out of Michigan coming off a serious knee injury.

That’s why Jones could make sense for the Vikings beyond this year. He won’t have the starting capital as a free agent, so he could play for Minnesota at a relatively cheap price. The Vikings are hoping that a fully healthy, 22-year-old McCarthy will take over his QB1 job next offseason and hold it for the next decade. But they also need a backup plan if his knee problem persists or he simply needs more development before he’s ready to take the reins. By signing Jones now, they can evaluate him as a candidate to fill that role next year. Whether he would be a bridge QB or a true backup would depend on what McCarthy looks like.

If Jones ends the season on the Vikings’ active roster, which is likely, then he will be eligible to enter the compensatory draft pick formula next year. The Vikings will have plenty of cap space to sign a number of free agents next spring, but they also have enough pending free agents (Darnold, Aaron Jones, Camryn Bynum, Byron Murphy Jr., Cam Robinson, Stephon Gilmore, Shaq Griffin) . , Dalton Risner, etc.) who could sign elsewhere and wipe out the additions, potentially putting Minnesota in its place for a comp pick or two. All they would have to do to add Daniel Jones to that mix would be to add him to their active roster before Week 18, if not sooner. That’s just another reason why this move made perfect sense for the Vikings.