According to NFL.com’s Jeffri Chadiha, recently re-signed Indianapolis Colts quarterback Daniel Jones is his top candidate to become the ‘Next Sam Darnold’ for the 2026 campaign:
Indianapolis Colts · Age: 28 · Year 8
It might seem like cheating to have Jones leading this list, because he was already one of the best stories of last season. He’s here, though, because that story didn’t end well, with a torn Achilles tendon taking him out of commission in a Week 14 loss to Jacksonville. The Colts were a real playoff contender at that point, and Jones was playing the best football of his career (he finished the year with 3,101 passing yards, 19 touchdowns and eight interceptions). Now he’s the undisputed leader of a team looking to recapture the magic that produced an 8-2 record through the first 10 games of 2025.
Jones received a two-year, $88 million deal earlier this month, after the team felt comfortable with his recovery process. It’s similar to the three-year, $100 million pact Darnold received from Seattle last offseason — enough money to convey faith, but not enough to ensure true love. There is plenty for Jones to still prove, which is why there’s every reason to believe he’ll be motivated to continue on the right track. There is talent around him, including running back Jonathan Taylor, wide receiver Alec Pierce and second-year tight end Tyler Warren. Head coach Shane Steichen, meanwhile, is the same guy who turned Jalen Hurts into an MVP candidate while serving as offensive coordinator in Philadelphia.
Jones also went through the type of humbling experience that kept Darnold pushing forward. The 2019 first-round pick knows what it’s like to have an entire city give up on him, as was the case when his career with the New York Giants was flatlining. Jones also was savvy enough to spend the final weeks of the 2024 season on the Minnesota Vikings’ practice squad after the Giants granted him his release. The lessons he learned by watching Darnold work with Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell certainly paid off once he signed a one-year deal in Indianapolis last year and beat out Anthony Richardson for the job. Like Darnold in Minneapolis, Jones didn’t end his first season as a starter wearing a new uniform the way he wanted. Season 2 in Indianapolis should offer more opportunities to prove his newfound success wasn’t a fluke.
Specifically, the 28-year-old Darnold was a former failed 2020 Top 5 pick of the New York Jets, who would bounce around to four NFL teams over the next five years, having finally found a long-term home with the Seattle Seahawks (after inking a 3-year, $100.5 million deal in free agency last offseason) and elevating his passing game en route to becoming a reigning Super Bowl Champion starting quarterback.
Like Darnold, the 28-year-old Jones was a former high draft pick, namely the 6th overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, who was cast off from the New York Giants—and was on his 3rd NFL team in 2 years, until he finally found a comfort zone with Colts head coach Shane Steichen last year, after signing a 1-year, $14 million contract last offseason.
During his debut season with the Colts in 2025, Jones was in the middle of a breakout career campaign, before injuries struck down the season’s stretch, including a fractured fibula which Jones gutted out and played through, and then the season-ending torn Achilles suffered in Week 14. Still recovering, the Colts felt comfortable enough with Jones’ underlying medicals and rehab progress to sign him to a 2-year, $88 million—which can be worth up to $100 million in performance incentives.
Having battled through injuries throughout his career, including previously with the Giants, if Jones can maintain his initial level of production from last year with the Colts before critical injuries limited him, this latest Indianapolis re-signing will have been a home run. However, it has to be for largely a full season too, something that Jones has somewhat struggled with t0-date—from both a consistency and durability standpoint.
That would very well place him in ‘Sam Darnold territory’ as a starting quarterback but the hope would also have to be that a late season surge and Super Bowl run would accompany such an earned status.
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