NFL free agency is just over one week away, meaning it won't be much longer before hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts are thrown around. Although free agent signings can pay off in a big way (See: The Philadelphia Eagles and Saquon Barkley in 2024), offseason signings can also blow up if desperation forces a team to sign the wrong player for a job.
With that in mind, one of the Green Bay Packers' NFC North rivals appears to be on pace to making a free agent blunder of their own.
Packers News: Vikings Reportedly Eyeing QB Daniel Jones in Free Agency
With Sam Darnold heading toward free agency, the Minnesota Vikings could be looking for a veteran signal-caller to pair alongside J.J. McCarthy. If Darnold commands too much money on his next deal, The Athletic's Alec Lewis reports that the Vikings view Daniel Jones as a potential replacement.
"(The Vikings) see J.J. McCarthy as their quarterback of the future and don’t want to hinder his progression," Lewis wrote. "They think a better path to building the optimal roster is paying a quarterback like Daniel Jones around $10 million instead of giving Darnold around $35 million."
What I heard about the Vikings after a week in Indy https://t.co/mLV3PbuKad
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) March 3, 2025
As much as Packers fans hate their rivals, it's easy to see why the Vikings potentially switching from Darnold to Jones would be a massive downgrade.
After a quiet year in San Francisco, Darnold joined the Vikings on a one-year, $10 million contract last offseason. The 'prove yourself' deal ended up paying off for the former 2018 third-overall pick, who went on to pass for 4,319 yards, 35 touchdowns (to 12 interceptions), a 66.2% completion rate, and 102.5 passer rating while leading Minnesota to a 14-3 record.
The Vikings potentially going from that sort of performance to naming Jones their QB1 would be embarrassing, to say the least. The ex-Duke gunslinger was waived by the New York Giants during the 2024 campaign less than two years after signing his $160 million extension, allowing him to join Minnesota for the remainder of the campaign.
Although Jones didn't get to start for the Vikings, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how he'd be a huge downgrade from Darnold. The 27-year-old QB's numbers have trended in the wrong direction for years, culminating in a 2024 performance that saw him tally only 2,070 passing yards and eight TDs to seven INTs with a 79.4 passer rating in 10 starts.
Sure, the Giants' abysmal roster construction played a role in that lackluster production, but it's also fair to say that Jones isn't good enough to be a starting quarterback. It takes a special kind of bad for a team to regret a $160 million extension that quickly.
Even if they're "only" going to pay him $10 million, Jones is bad enough to make that number age like warm milk.
As bad as replacing Darnold with Jones would be for the Vikings, the Packers wouldn't mind. In fact, they'd welcome that move. The NFC North has been his kryptonite throughout his six-year career, having gone 2-8 in 10 previous encounters with the division.
Packers fans will have a better idea of what their NFC North rivals' QB plans look like when the NFL's free agency tampering window opens on March 10.