According to the Boston Herald’s Ian Rapoport, New England Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien has been telling people around the NFL that he has accepted the job to become the new head football coach at Penn State University late Thursday evening.
O’Brien has become a hot commodity this year after being named New England’s offensive coordinator prior to the start of the season after being the de-facto play caller since former offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels left to become the head coach of the Denver Broncos in 2009.
He has made headlines the last two seasons with sideline blowups with Tom Brady and former WR Randy Moss. He was praised in both incidences for how he handled the situation with a star player by not treating them any differently than anyone else who had made the same error.
O’Brien had already been scheduled to interview for the Jacksonville Jaguars head coaching position and possibly could have had other NFL interviews lined up as well.
O’Brien, 42, is a Dorchester, MA native and a graduate of Brown University where he played defensive end and linebacker from 1990 to 1992.
He has extensive coaching experience at the college level starting in 1993 at Brown as tight ends and linebackers coach. He moved on to Georgia Tech in 1995 as an offensive grad assistant and was promoted to running backs coach. He then became quarterbacks coach and the Yellow Jackets offensive coordinator and later was also given the title as assistant head coach.
In 2003 he was hired at Maryland as running backs coach and he stayed until he moved onto Duke in 2005 as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
In 2007 he was hired by Bill Belichick as an offensive assistant. The following season he was the Patriots wide receivers coach before replacing McDaniels as the quarterbacks coach in 2009.
It is expected that O’Brien would remain with New England through the NFL playoffs much like Charlie Weis did when he was hired following the 2004 season to be the head coach of Notre Dame.
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