Daronte Jones started his coaching career sleeping in the back seat of his car and on air mattresses in his office. Now the Maryland native will be the defensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders, according to team sources.
Jones spent the past three seasons as the defensive backs coach with the Minnesota Vikings, working under renowned defensive coordinator Brian Flores.
The Vikings became a defensive powerhouse under Flores and Jones. Last season, they led the NFL in interceptions while allowing just 158.5 passing yards per game.
Flores used a unique scheme — one that focused on exotic blitzes and disguised coverages — to terrorize opposing quarterbacks.
Minnesota blitzed on a league-high 46.5% of opponents’ dropbacks. The Atlanta Falcons were the second-most blitz-happy team, sending an extra rusher on 36% of pass plays.
The Vikings’ blitzes worked. They pressured signal-callers an NFL-best 41% of the time and allowed just 15 passing touchdowns.
Commanders coach Dan Quinn experienced the ferocious Vikings defense firsthand in Week 14. Minnesota shut out Washington in a dominant 31-0 victory. Commanders quarterbacks Jayden Daniels and Marcus Mariota combined to complete just 11 of their 24 attempts, gaining 118 yards with two interceptions.
Commanders fans will hope Jones can bring a fraction of that harrowing Flores scheme to Washington. Last season was a slog for Washington’s defense under Joe Whitt Jr., who was fired after the season.
Quinn took over defensive play-calling duties partway through the campaign, but the change provided only a marginal improvement. The Commanders allowed a league-high 6,533 yards, struggling against the run and pass as takeaways proved elusive.
“The things that I’m not pleased with are our turnover margin and not creating enough takeaways, not doing a good enough job with the ball. … We want to play bold. We want to play aggressively,” Quinn said this month.
Whitt preached to defenders that the “ball is life.” It didn’t translate to the field.
Jones has a similar philosophy, though his passion for turnovers has led to positive results.
“It’s all about the ball. We try to tackle at the level of the ball. We attack the ball,” Jones said last year on the “NFL Spotlight” podcast. “I always tell players — especially defensive backs — they want to get paid. Well, you don’t get paid if you don’t touch the ball.”
Washington’s system under Quinn and Whitt was — compared with Flores’ scheme in Minnesota — simple. It depended on the front seven to maintain discipline in gaps while asking the secondary to drop into deeper zones.
It failed. According to most advanced metrics, like estimated points added per play, the Commanders had one of the least effective pass defenses in the league.
But Jones is an outside-the-box hire for a defense that needed new blood. Unlike Whitt, Jones has never coached on a staff with Quinn.
Quinn’s defensive philosophy was dominant when he led the Seattle Seahawks’ “Legion of Boom” defense a decade ago.
In 2026, Flores’ scheme could to take the league by storm.
“You have to adapt. And some of the things that were effective 10 years ago, five years ago, evolve and change,” Quinn said at his end-of-season press conference. “It’s kind of one of the fun parts of coaching.”
Jones will have the opportunity to blend the teachings of Flores and Quinn when he returns to the Washington region. The 47-year-old grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where he played high school football at Bishop McNamara. His college career took him to Morgan State in Baltimore.
A neck injury ended his playing days early — Jones said his doctors warned him that he could risk being paralyzed if he returned to the field. Unable to make an impact between the lines, he started assisting his fellow defensive backs in the film room and on the practice field at Morgan State.
“It started from that. It started from being around the guys — I couldn’t do anything anyway,” Jones said last year during an appearance on “The DB Network” podcast. “You start to see the game from a different perspective.”
The Marylander’s 25-year coaching career has featured stops at Louisiana high schools, Division II universities, FCS programs and the CFL. In 2009 — Jones’ final season as a defensive coordinator at Bowie State — he orchestrated a defense that led Division II in yards allowed.
The Morgan State alum spent most of his coaching career working with defensive backs. His stint with the Commanders will be his first chance to call plays in the NFL.
This opportunity has been a long time coming.
Jones hasn’t forgotten sleeping in his car after accepting a job at Chicago’s North Park University — a Division III school — in the offseason of 2002.
“For the six months I’m in Chicago, I’m homeless,” he told “The DB Network.”
When Jones was 26, he considered leaving coaching behind. He was accepted to law schools at LSU and Southern University before a former coach offered him a new gig — the defensive coordinator job at Bowie State.
The next stop after Bowie State wasn’t any more glamorous as a cornerbacks coach at UCLA.
“I was back to being homeless. I slept in my meeting room for the whole year,” Jones said during last year’s podcast appearance. “I had my blow-up mattress under my desk.”
Now he’ll be coordinating an NFL defense just a few miles from where he played high school football.
“Washington got a good one,” Vikings linebacker Blake Cashman wrote on X. “Beyond happy for DJ.”
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.