Broncos Announce Hire of Darren Mougey as Director of Player Personnel

And just like that, GM George Paton has completed the philosophical insulation of his Denver Broncos front office. After hiring Kelly Kleine as executive director of football operations/special assistant to the GM and Roman Phifer as senior personnel executive earlier this week, Paton waited until the end to announce who would be his true No. 2 as director of player personnel.

Opting to promote from within, the job went to Darren Mougey, who will serve as the 'Matt Russell' to Paton's 'John Elway', it was announced on Friday.

"Darren is an outstanding evaluator who has an excellent reputation around the league as an up-and-coming personnel executive," Paton said via statement. "Getting to work with Darren over the last five months, he is a strong communicator and has great leadership qualities. We're fortunate to have Darren leading our pro and college scouting while also being a sounding board on all roster decisions."

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Over the last nine years with the Broncos, Mougey has held down many different scouting roles for the club since being hired as a scouting intern in 2012. He most recently worked as the team’s Assistant Director of College Scouting in 2020.

Working his way up through the Broncos' scouting ranks from being an area scout to serving as the assistant director of college scouting under Brian Stark last year, Mougey has paid his dues within the organization and made contributions in the scouting realm to the team's Super Bowl 50 championship.

A former wide receiver, Mougey played college ball at San Diego State. Although he went undrafted in 2009, he caught on with the Arizona Cardinals for a short time on the practice squad before the NFL told him he wasn't good enough to hang as a player.

As a scout, though, Mougey's legend was just getting started. At 36 years old, he brings a nice youthful juice to the front office and is already well known among the Broncos' scouts and personnel execs.

If Paton was going to promote from within, it's somewhat of a surprise that the job didn't go to Stark, who's held a senior role for much longer and even interviewed for the Broncos' GM vacancy. Instead, it went to Stark's assistant.

Paton could have done as he did with Kleine and recruit someone from the Minnesota Vikings' personnel department but he didn't. That can only mean that he truly was impressed by Mougey after working with him through the 2021 pre-draft scouting process.

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