Daniel Jones, Sam Darnold: Two different paths converge at MetLife Stadium in Week 1

There was a time not long ago when Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones were heirs to the hope and hype of New York’s football scene. Drafted in 2018 and 2019 by the Jets and Giants, respectively, the two princes arrived in town looking to add championship trophies for their franchises and become MetLife mainstays.

Both will be playing in that building on Sunday when the NFL regular season opens — not as the draft day darlings they were, and certainly not as the star players they once were projected to become, but as quarterbacks who are swiftly running out of chances to show what they have always seemed capable of doing . . . and yet rarely have.

Jones will be leading the Giants to begin this latest prove-it year in which he’ll be asked to recapture at least a little of the form that — for three games at the end of the 2022 season, including two against these Vikings — successfully capped his last prove-it campaign and earned him a new four-year, $160 million contract.

Darnold, now with his fourth NFL team, will be starting for Minnesota in place of rookie J.J. McCarthy, who was looking like a Week 1 player before he suffered a season-ending knee injury in his first preseason game last month.

While their career numbers are somewhat similar — they have virtually the same number of career regular-season starts and almost identical records, and even their touchdown numbers line up almost perfectly — their fates have been very different. Jones has remained with one team while Darnold has bounced around the league.

Sunday’s game, then, will give these two quarterbacks who once were tied together as the city’s future the chance to look across the field at each other and see an alternate-universe version of themselves.

For Jones, it is a glimpse into the nomadic, clipboard-holding, spot-starting life of a veteran backup quarterback that could be waiting for him shortly if things don’t pan out for him this season.

For Darnold, it is a chance to return to his old home field and see what it looks like when the organization that drafts you sticks by you.

Giants coach Brian Daboll is well aware that both of those planes exist, and that sometimes it’s just a matter of luck which one a quarterback lands on.

“Every place, every organization is different,” he said on Monday. “I don’t want to speak for other teams. [Quarterback] is a hard position to play. You prepare as hard as you can. There’s a lot of things that go into the success of a player.”

Certainly, though, there are more Darnolds in today’s NFL than Joneses. Teams generally are quick to abandon ship if their picks don’t work out quickly. That’s what the Jets did after three years with Darnold. In fact, that entire 2018 class of quarterbacks, of which Darnold was the second player at the position taken, has become the lens through which this league-wide phenomenon of disposability can be viewed.

Five quarterbacks were taken in that first round. Counting offseason and practice squad moves since, they’ll have been with 17 different teams by the start of this season. Baker Mayfield is with his fourth and Josh Rosen has been with seven. Only Josh Allen (Bills) and Lamar Jackson (Ravens) have remained with the teams that selected them.

Daboll has been part of two long-term quarterback relationships since that draft. The first was as Allen’s offensive coordinator in Buffalo. The second is here with Jones as his head coach. He said “stability” goes a long way in helping quarterbacks stick, but that hasn’t necessarily been an ally for Jones. He’s on his third head coach and second general manager, and he has had so many play-callers in his helmet that it’s hard to keep track of them all.

“In terms of situations and why people are successful and why not, that’s a long conversation and probably [includes] information when you’re not part of that organization that you don’t have,” Daboll said.

Where Jones and Darnold head after Sunday’s reconnection is anyone’s guess. Either certainly is capable of playing well enough in 2024 to be back with his current team next season, although that might be dicier for Darnold because of the Vikings’ investment in McCarthy (a quarterback who, coincidentally, many believed the Giants were interested in drafting as a potential future replacement for Jones).

Former NFL quarterback Jordan Palmer, now a well-regarded coach for the position, said he expects big things from Darnold, who spent 2023 as Brock Purdy’s backup in San Francisco. Now he’ll be in a quarterback-friendly offense throwing passes to Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison and handing off to Aaron Jones.

“I am really excited to see Sam Darnold finally in a good situation,” Palmer said in a recent appearance on “The Rich Eisen Show.” “Stats are stats, numbers are numbers, but I think it’s hard to argue he’s been in tough spot after tough spot after tough spot, impossible-to-succeed-type spots . . . I think Sam is in a position here to make a run for Comeback Player of the Year.”

And who knows? If the Giants wind up moving on from Jones next offseason but aren’t drafting high enough to land a rookie quarterback who can start immediately, maybe Darnold could become their answer as a free agent. Daboll certainly knows Darnold well enough, having scouted him during that 2018 draft process, and he and general manager Joe Schoen always talk about how significant that scouting time is not only for the selections but for down the road.

“Spent a lot of time with Sam out at USC,” Daboll said. “Working him out, taking him to dinner, meeting with him on the visits. I’ve got a lot of respect for Sam. He’s an athletic quarterback that has a good head on his shoulders, knows where to go with the football . . . I’ve always been a big fan of Sam.”

Imagine that: Darnold back in the area where his journey began, again trying to lift a franchise to success.

Hold that thought. Let’s get through Sunday first.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.