Giants Head Coach John Harbaugh's First Defensive Coordinator Candidate Identified

New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh isn’t wasting any time putting together his new assistant coaching staff.

Ahead of his introductory press conference at noon on Tuesday, Harbaugh and the Giants, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN, have put in a request to interview Minnesota Vikings passing game coordinator and defensive backs coach Daronte Jones for their defensive coordinator position.

The Vikings finished the 2025 season with the league’s second-best pass defense, which allowed 158.2 passing yards per game, and an average of 6.03 passing yards per play, the ninth-best mark in the NFL.

As part of that performance, Minnesota held the Giants offense in Week 16 to an astonishing13 net yards passing, their lowest passing yardage allowed all season, as the Giants primarily avoided passing in that 16-13 loss.

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Jones has been in coaching since 2001, when he was a graduate assistant at Lenoir-Rhyne.

He spent the 2001-2015 season mostly bouncing around the college ranks, with a brief stop at the high school level in 2004 (Jeanerette High School in Louisiana), where he got his first taste of being a defensive coordinator, and a stint as the defensive backs coach for the Montreal Alouettes in 2011.

Jones made the jump to the NFL in 2016 as the assistant defensive backs coach with the Miami Dolphins.

After two seasons there, he spent 2018 and 2019 with the Bengals as their cornerbacks coach, and then had his first stint with the Vikings in 2020 as their defensive backs coach.

He returned to the college ranks in 2021 with LSU, then rejoined the Vikings the following season, first as the team’s defensive backs coach and, since 2023, as their defensive pass game coordinator.

Jones has already drawn interest from the Cowboys and Jets for their defensive coordinator vacancies.

Last season, the Giants' pass defense finished 16th in the league, allowing 214.2 yards per game and 6.62 yards per play, 17th in the league.

In addition to possibly having Jones as the defensive coordinator, his background working with defensive backs, particularly cornerbacks, could be a plus for the Giants, who are looking for Dru Phillips and Deonte Banks to take significant steps forward.

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