The NFL moved quickly Wednesday to take over an investigation into alleged sexual harassment by Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder, saying the league, not the team, will hire an investigator to lead the probe.

The Commanders announced Wednesday morning that the team had hired an outside investigator to look into former team employee Tiffani Johnston’s claims that Snyder groped her thigh at a team dinner more than a decade ago and pushed her toward his limousine with his hand on her lower back.

Hours later, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league, not the team, would oversee the probe, and Commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated that point during his news conference at the Super Bowl.

“I do not see any way that a team can do its own investigation of itself,” Goodell said. “That’s something that we would do. We would do it with an outside expert that would help us come to a conclusion of what the facts are.”

Although many former team employees accused Snyder of presiding over a culture that was toxic to women, he had not been personally accused of sexual harassment until last week, when Johnston detailed her allegations against him to Congress. Johnston had declined to participate in Wilkinson’s investigation.

Snyder has denied the allegations, calling them “outright lies.”

The developments follow a familiar pattern. When former employees of Washington’s NFL team first complained in 2020 about rampant sexual harassment by team executives, the team hired attorney Beth Wilkinson’s firm to investigate. The league took over that probe and Wilkinson reported her findings to Goodell.

The NFL fined Snyder $10 million and he temporarily ceded day-to-day operations of the franchise to his wife, Tanya. Wilkinson’s findings have not been released publicly, and leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform have pressed the league to turn over details of that probe.

• Commanders safety Deshazor Everett turned himself in to a Virginia jail on an involuntary manslaughter charge after an investigation found he was speeding before his sports car slammed into trees and rolled over, killing his passenger.

Everett, 29, was treated for serious injuries after the Dec. 23 crash. His passenger, Olivia S. Peters, 29, of Las Vegas, died at a hospital.

GIANTS: Giants hired Don “Wink” Martindale as their new defensive coordinator, a source confirmed to The New York Daily News , landing a respected coach with a calling card for in-your-face playcalling and relentless blitzing.

Martindale, 58, blitzed his Baltimore Ravens more than any other NFL defense for three years running from 2018-2020. They fell to sixth overall in 2021 as Martindale tried to compensate for a slew of injuries to his secondary.

The Giants have lacked pass rushing talent for a long while and Martindale’s blitz rates hopefully will help generate pressure on opposing quarterbacks regardless. The Ravens blitzed 39.6% of the time in 2018, 54.9% of the time in 2019 and 44.1% in 2020 before that dropped to 31.1% this season.

ROGER GOODELL: At his annual Super Bowl news conference, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was grilled on two hot topics that have put the league under heavy scrutiny: racism and discrimination in hiring. There were other issues that don’t shine a positive light on pro football, including threats to the integrity of the sport, and misconduct by players and team executives.

A week after former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores, who is Black, filed a lawsuit alleging both racism in the league and being offered money by team owner Stephen Ross to tank games, Goodell vowed action on several fronts.

“We won’t tolerate racism. We won’t tolerate discrimination,” Goodell said. “I found all of the allegations, whether they were based on racism or discrimination or the integrity of our game, all of those to me were very disturbing. They are very serious matters to us on all levels, and we need to make sure we get to the bottom of all of them.”

That begins with the NFL’s poor record for hiring minorities as head coaches. While the league has made progress with other jobs, from general managers to coordinators, the most visible representative of a franchise is the coach. There are five minority head coaches on the 32 teams, two Black, one biracial, one Hispanic and one Lebanese.

Asked if the process is flawed, from how interviews are conducted to who might be conducting them, Goodell said the league already is looking into that — whether it involves changes in the Rooney Rule that requires interviews of minority candidates for coaching and executive jobs, or a new rule entirely.

“I think that’s the core of the message that we’ve been talking about here is, OK, we’re not having this success we want with head coaches,” he noted. “How do we evolve that rule or do we have to have a new rule? Do we need to figure out some other way of being able to achieve that outcome? And I think we’re not going to rest until we find that and we get those kind of outcomes that I think are mandatory for us. That just has to be the way we’re going to move forward to happen inclusively.”

SALUTE TO SERVICE: Denver Broncos tight end Andrew Beck has won the NFL’s Salute to Service award.

Beck will be recognized at NFL Honors, the prime-time awards show Thursday night at which The Associated Press reveals its individual award winners for the 2021 season. A three-year pro, Beck has been almost as involved in initiatives helping military members as he has in the Broncos’ playbook. Beck came naturally to his strong affiliation with armed forces causes.

Over the past three seasons, Beck has partnered with America’s Gold Star Families, Buckley Space Force Base, Fort Carson Army Base, Freedom Service Dogs, TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors), USO Colorado, VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System, Volunteers of America: Colorado, and Wounded Warrior Project. He’s reached more than 425 military families through his strategic outreach.

SUPER BET: A Texas furniture tycoon known for his generosity and love of gambling set a record for the largest mobile sports bet made in history, according to media reports. Jim McIngvale, better known as the business magnate “Mattress Mack,” bet $4.53 million on the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl.

Louisiana just launched mobile sports betting on Jan. 28, and McIngvale drove 100 miles from Houston to a convenience store just across the Louisiana border and used the Caesars Sportsbook app.

McIngvale earned his nickname from his Gallery Furniture commercials where he wore a mattress and screamed he would “Save you money!” One of his Christmas traditions is donating rooms of furniture to families in need, and he opened up his Gallery Furniture stores as as shelter in Houston during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. He also organized volunteers and trucks to rescue Texans during that historic storm and flew first responders and military veterans to that year’s Astros-Dodgers World Series in Los Angeles.