A familiar face could be returning to Foxborough to mentor New England quarterback Mac Jones.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said on WEEI radio that there’s mutual interest between Bill O’Brien and the Patriots to have the former offensive coordinator replace Josh McDaniels.

O’Brien – the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Alabama – is the most logical successor. He knows the system and helped develop Deshaun Watson into an elite quarterback. O’Brien first joined the Patriots in 2007 and left in 2012 to become coach at Penn State.

“I do believe there’s interest,” Rapoport said. “I think there’s interest from them and there’s interest from him. A lot of times when that’s the case, these things end up working out.”

Don’t expect an imminent hiring though.

“Typically, the Patriots work very, very slow on staffing,” Rapoport said. “Like, I can remember many times they would go to the (NFL) combine and not be set on staffing.”

That’s consistent with what Nick Saban said in a press conference on Wednesday; he hasn’t gotten word that O’Brien plans to fly the coop for an NFL job just yet.

“Bill’s done a great job for us here and Bill’s had a very successful career,” Saban said. “I don’t think Bill is trying to leave… we have no indication of that – other than what y’all put on the internet – right now, which is a lot of maybes, so we’re not really trying to address something that might happen.”

Based on his track record both in New England and elsewhere, O’Brien makes a ton of sense to take over the offense. Nick Caley, Troy Brown and

Mick Lombardi are all still a little green to take over play-calling duties and there’s not a bevy of external candidates with experience developing young quarterbacks.

BRONCOS: John Elway is refuting Brian Flores’ claim in a lawsuit that his interview with the Denver Broncos in 2019 was a sham and only conducted to satisfy the NFL’s Rooney Rule.

“While I was not planning to respond publicly to the false and defamatory claims by Brian Flores, I could not be silent any longer with my character, integrity and professionalism being attacked,” the Denver Broncos president of football operations said in a statement released by the team Thursday.

Elway said he seriously considered Flores, one of five candidates for the job that eventually went to then-Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.
Flores, recently fired as head coach in Miami, named the Broncos, Dolphins and Giants along with the league in a lawsuit this week alleging unfair hiring practices in the NFL.

Flores said in his lawsuit that Elway, then the team’s general manager, and president/CEO Joe Ellis showed up an hour late for his interview at a Providence, Rhode Island hotel, and they “looked completely disheveled and it was obvious that they had been drinking heavily the night before.”

Elway denied Flores’ contention he was hung over and just going through the motions to satisfy the league’s requirement that teams interview minority candidates for head coaching jobs.

“For Brian to make an assumption about my appearance and state of mind early that morning was subjective, hurtful and just plain wrong,” Elway said.

• Denver promoted Darren Mougey from player personnel director to assistant general manager. Mougey, 36, will continue overseeing the pro and college scouting departments while working with GM George Paton on player personnel and college scouting decisions, the team said.

Mougey has spent a decade in a variety of scouting roles with the Broncos, whom he joined as a personnel intern in 2012.

Mougey was a four-year letter winner and team captain at San Diego State, where he played wide receiver his final two seasons after converting from quarterback. He competed in NFL training camps with the Falcons in 2009 and Cardinals in 2010.

COMMANDERS: Former Washington employees and members of Congress pressured the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell to release a report about the team’s history of sexual harassment and its sexist, hostile workplace culture. They said the team and owner Dan Snyder have not been held accountable for their misdeeds.

Snyder commissioned an investigation into the team’s workplace environment that was taken over by the NFL. After the investigation by attorney Beth Wilkinson’s firm, the league fined Washington $10 million and Snyder temporarily ceded day-to-day operations of the team to his wife, Tanya.

But the league did not release any details of the Wilkinson investigation’s findings, and former team employees who spoke before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform noted the contrast to the way the NFL handled an investigation into allegations that quarterback Tom Brady deflated footballs.

In 2020, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and widespread protests about systemic racism, the team dropped its longtime name “Redskins” amid pressure from sponsors to get rid of a moniker that was criticized for decades for being offensive to Native Americans. The team was known as the Washington Football Team until Wednesday, when Snyder announced its new name, the Commanders.

“Just yesterday, Mr. Snyder tried to rebrand his team as the Commanders. With due respect, it’s going to take more than a name change to fix that broken culture,” said Rep. Carol Maloney, D-N.Y., the committee chairwoman.

Former team employee Tiffani Johnston made new allegations against Snyder, saying he placed his hand on her thigh without her consent at a team dinner and that he pushed her toward his limousine with his hand on her lower back.

“He left his hand on the middle of my thigh until I physically removed it,” Johnston said.

Describing the incident outside Snyder’s limousine, she said: “The only reason Dan Snyder removed his hand from my back and stopped pushing me towards his limo was because his attorney intervened and said, `Dan, Dan, this is a bad idea.’ … I learned that I should remove myself from Dan’s grip while his attorney was distracting him.”