Luke Braun's Film Room: Where The Hell Did Patrick Jones II Come From?

After Patrick Jones II standout game against the San Francisco 49ers, Luke Braun asks whether or not Jones' ascendence is real — and where it (and he) even comes from.

Photo by Ryan Kang/Getty Images

April 30th, 2021 will go down in Minnesota Vikings history as a breaking point. It was Day 2 of the NFL Draft. Day 1 had gone well. Minnesota had Christian Darrisaw on a flight to Minnesota, and thanks in part to a savvy Rick Spielman trade, four picks in the third round.

As Mike Zimmer will tell you, Rick went rogue. Without consulting his head coach, Spielman picked quarterback Kellen Mond. Zimmer was disgusted, so much so that he stormed out of the room. Not until the next day’s debrief did Zimmer and Spielman try to reconcile. In the meantime, the rest of those selections came and went. Zimmer didn’t like those selections either. He told Spielman that he thought these players were no better than backups.

Their relationship never recovered. By year’s end in 2021, they weren’t on speaking terms. Zimmer was desperately trying to defend his honor via PowerPoint. A longstanding era of Vikings football ended officially on January 10th, 2022 — but if you wanted to point to one moment that marked the beginning of the end, it came on April 30th.

For whatever it’s worth, Zimmer was right. Just three years later, Mond and another one of Rick’s third-rounders, Wyatt Davis, are frozen out of every NFL roster and even the ranks of practice squads. Another, Chazz Surratt, failed to make the Vikings in his second year and is currently playing special teams with the Jets. 

The fourth and final pick from that day has been a reliable role player over three different defensive schemes and currently has four sacks on the young 2024 season, tied for second in the NFL. He’s the only thing to come out of that fateful war room that had anything close to a positive impact on the Vikings. He just had the game of his life against the stout San Francisco 49ers. 

His name is Patrick Jones II.

Where In The World Is Patrick Jones From?

Photo: Getty

The Imamiya tea field is known as one of the best places to get a clear view of Mt. Fuji. It’s one of the most beautiful places in all of Japan, with the distant white-capped peak imposing itself over organized rows of green tea plants. If you go around harvesting season in late spring, you’ll see the blossoming leaves practically beckoning you toward Japan’s highest peak.

Patrick Jones grew up about a two hour drive away, admiring the same breathtaking summit. Yokosuka, Japan has a U.S. Naval base where Patrick Jones the senior worked as an IT chief. With Patrick’s father, Patrick Sr., bouncing all around the world on different naval deployments, it was hard for Jones the younger to think of anywhere in particular as home. Yokosuka Naval Base, where he was born, is the closest answer.

Jones has roots in Italy from when his family lived in Naples. They traveled the country, climbed Mount Vesuvius and soaked up the culture. After that, they lived in Jacksonville before another stint in Japan. 

During that second stint in Misawa, on the northern tip of Honshu island, Jones attended Sollars Elementary, a school for families of active Department of Defense personnel. These parents are often off on deployments or other projects and can be absent for large periods of time, so these institutions lean into after-school activities to keep kids engaged.

Jones fell in love with a lot of them. Baseball was his first love, but he wrestled, played basketball and even learned the art of competitive counting. It’s called soroban abacus, and it’s a tradition that dates back to the 16th century. Jones was good at it — in 6th grade, Jones even won a competition like this one.

By high school, the Jones family was back at Yokosuka. He joined the football team in ninth grade and, as it is for so many future NFL players, made an instant impression.