Getty
Quarterback Mac Jones of the San Francisco 49ers.
It remains unclear who will be calling the shots from the Minnesota Vikings‘ front office this offseason, but a stronger and deeper plan in the quarterback room is liable to be priority one for whichever executive replaces recently-fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
Minnesota unceremoniously dealt Adofo-Mensah the axe last week, as quarterback Sam Darnold prepared to lead the Seattle Seahawks into Super Bowl LX as 4.5-point favorites against the New England Patriots. Darnold was the Vikings’ starter last year, finishing the campaign with a 14-3 record and taking the team to the postseason.
Adofo-Mensah and company decided to let Darnold walk in free agency in favor of second-year signal-caller JJ McCarthy, the No. 10 pick in the 2024 NFL draft, who missed his entire rookie campaign with a knee injury. The Vikings predictably struggled, with McCarthy at times looking unplayable, and missed the playoffs.
Now, in perhaps the second-best division in football, Minnesota has to rebuild the quarterback room. Head coach Kevin O’Connell has spoken freely about adding both talent and experience, and neither he nor Adofo-Mensah, when the team still employed the latter, shied away from saying they wanted real competition for McCarthy in 2026.
But Minnesota is more than $40 million over the salary cap as February 2 and owns the No. 18 pick in the first round of the upcoming draft. Free agency is relatively thin at the position, so a trade could be the best path forward.
Unfortunately for the Vikings, there are only a handful of sensible and affordable trade targets. Among them is San Francisco 49ers quarterback Mac Jones, but he’s coming off a bounce-back campaign and several other franchises might be interested. That may make Jones harder to acquire and more expensive for the team that ultimately lands him.
Trade for Mac Jones Could Cost Vikings 2nd-Round Pick
GettyQuarterback Mac Jones of the San Francisco 49ers.
Alex Ballentine of Bleacher Report on Monday dubbed Jones the Vikings’ top trade target heading into the spring.
“Mac Jones would be an ideal candidate,” Ballentine wrote. “He has experience with Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco and he’s only going to cost a team that trades for him a $3.5 million cap hit.”
Shanahan spoke in January about Jones’ future with the Niners, seeing as he is the backup behind Brock Purdy. However, Jones started eight games in Purdy’s stead due to injury concerns last year. He went 5-3, threw for more than 2,150 yards and owned a touchdown-interception ratio of better than 2:1 (13 TDs and six INTs).
The 49ers head coach said the franchise will always listen to trade offers, but added the team isn’t in the business of getting rid of good players — especially ones who played major roles in San Francisco making the playoffs and winning a game in the Wild Card Round despite a litany of injury issues to top performers on both sides of the football.
Cardinals, Browns and Jets All Potentially Interested in Trade for Mac Jones
One can safely translate Shanahan’s comments as the opening salvo of trade negotiations to come, and the supply/demand equation across the league is only going to drive Jones’ value up, as will his low salary cap number and pedigree as a former first-round pick of the Patriots.
A third-round pick wouldn’t be out of the question for Jones in a vacuum, and a second-rounder could even come into play given Ballentine’s assessment of other teams around the league and their potential interest in Jones.
He named Jones among the top three trade targets for the Arizona Cardinals, Cleveland Browns and New York Jets as of early February.
The Cardinals have clearly been preparing to shop Kyler Murray this offseason by holding him out of games to protect his health.
Meanwhile, the Browns have a new head coach in Todd Monken coming off three years as the offensive coordinator with the Baltimore Ravens and looking at a QB room headlined by Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson.
Then there’s the Jets, who whiffed gloriously on Justin Fields and fired just about every member of head coach Aaron Glenn’s staff after just one season, save for Glenn himself.
Max Dible covers the NFL, NBA and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. He covered local and statewide news as a reporter for West Hawaii Today and served as news director for BigIslandNow.com and Pacific Media Group’s family of Big Island radio stations before joining Heavy. More about Max Dible
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