While much of the focus for Minnesota Vikings fans at the start of this year’s NFL coaching carousel has been on the fate of defensive coordinator Brian Flores, a couple of teams have now requested interviews with the man thought by many to be the top in-house choice to be his successor should he not return to Minnesota.
According to numerous sources, both the New York Jets and the Dallas Cowboys have requested to interview defensive backs coach Daronte Jones for their vacancies at the defensive coordinator position.
Jones was the Vikings’ defensive backs coach in 2020, then departed to be the defensive coordinator at Louisiana State in 2021 before returning to the Vikings as the defensive backs coach in 2022. Over the past three seasons, he has also been the team’s defensive pass game coordinator.
Jones has been coaching in some capacity since 2001, and his journey has taken him everywhere from the high school ranks in Louisiana to the Canadian Football League and two other NFL stops. He was the assistant defensive backs coach for the Miami Dolphins in 2016 and 2017 (prior to Brian Flores’ time as the head coach in Miami) and the cornerbacks coach for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2018 and 2019 before he came to Minnesota the first time.
If the Vikings should lose both Flores and Jones to other coaching opportunities, I’m not sure who the next in-house option would be to potentially get promoted to the defensive coordinator position, or if there even really is one. In that instance, the team may have to look outside of their current coaching staff to find someone to run their defense. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. But now, along with Brian Flores, there are at least a couple of teams that are sniffing around one of his top lieutenants to fill vacancies on their own coaching staffs.
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