New LSU coordinator has St. Mary ties

Local former coaches who have worked with or coached against LSU’s new defensive coordinator have described him as a hard worker and are not surprised to see him in his current position.
Daronte Jones, who had one-year assistant coaching stints at Franklin and Jeanerette High schools, was hired as LSU’s defensive coordinator Tuesday.
He comes to the Tigers with plenty of experience at various college and professional stops in addition to his high school experience. Most recently, he served this past year as defensive backs coach for the Minnesota Vikings.
He thanked LSU Coach Ed Orgeron and the administration in a release announcing his hiring.
“I am blessed and thankful to be part of the LSU family, community, and the strong traditions of this program,” he said in the LSU release. “Geaux Tigers.”
At Franklin High, he coached defensive backs during the 2003 season under then-head coach Jerry Martin.
“He was very good at getting his message across to the kids,” Martin said. “They responded real well to him. He’s probably the best defensive backs coach I’ve ever seen. He was very, very good with them, and he played defensive back in college.”
From that experience as a defensive back, Jones could pass the knowledge to the players, according to Martin.
That season, the Hornets won the district title.
“Daronte was a big reason for that, because it was very difficult to do anything defensively on us, especially on the secondary,” Martin said.
Ty Burdett, who served as defensive coordinator at West St. Mary, also had good things to say about Jones.
“I know that the kids that I’ve all talked to during that year, they loved him,” Burdett said. “He was good guy, well-liked by the team. He was a personal fella, open to conversation. He was just a real-good guy.”
After his stints at Franklin and Jeanerette, Jones took a job at Bowie State as assistant head coach/defensive coordinator, worked as cornerbacks coach at UCLA, as defensive backs coach with the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes, served as secondary coach and later assistant head coach at the University of Hawaii, worked with former LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda at the University of Wisconsin and then worked in the NFL ranks with the Miami Dolphins, Cincinnati Bengals and the Vikings, according to an LSU release.
“Daronte is a great addition to our staff,” Orgeron said in a news release. “We did a lot of research and talked to a lot of coaches, including Dave (Aranda), and every person we spoke with raved about his knowledge and passion for the game. He’s going to bring tremendous energy to our defense, and he will put our players in position to make plays, no matter the situation or scheme.”
Players and coaches were impressed with the job he did this past year with the Vikings, too, in a situation where they had four rookies in their defensive backfield and no offseason due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune story.
“He’s been earning his money this year,” Vikings safety Harrison Smith told the paper in December. “He does a really good job of communicating exactly what we need to get done and things that we can expect while also not overloading the group with things that can bog you down.
“There can be a balance there based on just experience levels,” Smith added. “He’s been doing a great job of starting at the fundamentals and expanding from there and giving us enough information to grow without handicapping us.”
For students, Burdett and Martin said that the success of Jones shows what can be done with hard work.
“It gives kids that opportunity to see somebody work hard and move up, because coach always talked about where he wanted to be. He wanted to be a professional coach, and he did. He got to that level, and now, where he’s at making $1.3 million in a year, his contract, I know St. Mary Parish didn’t pay him that much,” Burdett laughed. “But yeah, if you work hard, build on your dreams and put the effort in, doors open up for you, and they did for him for sure.”