Former Arizona Cardinals head coach Steve Wilks and longtime defensive assistant Ray Horton have joined Brian Flores as plaintiffs in the former Miami Dolphins coach’s discrimination lawsuit against the NFL.
In an amended lawsuit filed Thursday and obtained by USA TODAY Sports, Horton alleges the Tennessee Titans interviewed him for their 2016 head coaching vacancy when they had already promised the head coach the job. acting Mike Mularkey.
Wilks, meanwhile, claims he was “unjustly and discriminatoryly fired” by the Cardinals in 2018 after just one season at the helm.
“When Coach Flores filed this lawsuit, I knew I had a duty to myself and all black coaches and aspiring black coaches in the NFL to stand by him,” said Wilks, who is now coordinator of the defensive passing game and secondary coach for the Carolina Panthers. said in a statement. “This lawsuit has shed important new light on a problem that we all know exists, but too few are prepared to confront.”
The amended complaint also includes new allegations that the Texans and Houston Dolphins have retaliated against Flores in the two-plus months since he first filed a complaint against the league.
The Cardinals, Texans and Titans generally denied major allegations against them in a series of statements Thursday. A Dolphins spokesperson did not immediately respond to a message from USA TODAY Sports.
The NFL declined to comment through spokesman Brian McCarthy. The league has previously pledged to defend itself against the allegations in Flores’ lawsuit, saying they are “baseless”.
The addition of two plaintiffs — and specific allegations of discrimination against three other teams — marks a significant expansion of Flores’ original lawsuit, which attorneys Douglas Wigdor and John Elefterakis filed in federal court in New York on Feb. 1.
Flores, who was fired by the Dolphins earlier this year, alleged the NFL and its teams engaged in “systemic racial discrimination” in their hiring and firing of minority coaches.
“I continue to be touched by the outpouring of support for my claims against the NFL and applaud Steve Wilks and Ray Horton for standing up against systemic racial discrimination,” Flores said in a statement. “Their claims are the stark reality of the problems facing black NFL coaches, which our collective hope in this case is to end once and for all.”
Perhaps the most notable allegation in the amended complaint concerns Horton, a 24-year coaching veteran who most recently worked as the Washington Commanders’ defensive backs coach in 2019.
According to the lawsuit, the Titans asked Horton to fly from his Phoenix home to Nashville on short notice to interview for their head coaching job on Jan. 16, 2016. The team had previously interviewed three candidates, according to media reports. : Doug Marrone on January 14, and Teryl Austin and Mularkey on January 15
Horton, who was Tennessee’s defensive coordinator at the time, interviewed five executives from the team’s training facility and then met Mularkey on the way out of the building, according to the lawsuit. Horton recalled feeling that Mularkey’s presence was “strange,” according to the complaint, given that the acting coach had interviewed him the day before. The Titans announced the hiring of Mularkey a few hours later.
The lawsuit describes Horton’s interview as a “sham” while citing as evidence an interview Mularkey gave to the “Steelers Realm” podcast in 2020. One of the hosts asked Mularkey, who is now retired, if he had any regrets about his career.
“I allowed myself at one point when I was in Tennessee to get caught up in something that I regret, and I still regret it,” Mularkey said on the podcast. “The owner there – Amy Adams Strunk and her family – came and told me I was going to be the head coach in 2016, before they went through the Rooney rule. And so I sitting there knowing I was the head coach in 2016 as they went through this fake hiring process.
The Titans had already fulfilled their obligation under the Rooney Rule before interviewing Horton by meeting with Austin, who is also black. At the time, the rule only required NFL teams to include a minority coach in their candidate pool for head coaching positions.
But Horton, 61, said in a statement he was “devastated and humbled” to hear Mularkey say he had already been promised the job, ahead of his own interview.
“By joining this business, I hope to turn this experience into positive and lasting change and create true equal opportunity in the future,” he said.
The Titans denied making a decision before interviewing Horton.
“Our 2016 head coaching search was an open and competitive process during which we conducted in-person interviews with four candidates and followed all NFL rules,” the team said Thursday in a statement to ESPN. . “The organization was undecided on its next head coach during the process and made its final decision after reviewing all four candidates after interviews were completed.”
The allegations in the lawsuit involving Wilks are more general.
The lawsuit attempts to contrast the Cardinals’ treatment of Wilks, who was fired after going 3-13 in 2018, with that of general manager Steve Keim, who was arrested for driving under the influence that summer but kept his job.
He also alleges Wilks, 52, hasn’t been given the same time and opportunity to succeed in his White coaching role – as his successor at Arizona, Kliff Kingsbury.
“Mr. Wilks was discriminated against by the Arizona Cardinals in a manner consistent with the experiences of many black coaches,” Wigdor and Elefterakis wrote in the complaint. Wilks was hired as a “transition coach” and had no significant chance of succeeding.
The Cardinals responded in a statement Thursday, calling the organizational decisions made at the end of the 2018 season “very difficult.”
“But as we said at the time, they were fully motivated by what was in the best interests of our organization and necessary for the betterment of the team,” the team said. “We are satisfied that the facts reflect this and demonstrate that these allegations are false.”
Flores’ part of the complaint, meanwhile, now includes actions taken by the Dolphins and Texans that she says are retaliatory.
Flores alleges that the Dolphins both failed to pay the remainder of his contract and “attempted to recover the compensation paid to him” in arbitration proceedings, without going into specifics. Flores claimed in Thursday’s filing that he noted in a December 2019 memo to general manager Chris Grier and two other leaders of “the toxicity that existed” within the organization, including the allegation that owner Stephen Ross enticed him to refuel by offering $100,000 per loss.
The Dolphins — like the other two teams listed as defendants in the original lawsuit, the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants — have previously dismissed the allegations in Flores’ lawsuit.
The lawsuit also claims the Texans refused to hire Flores because he sued the NFL, which general manager Nick Caserio has publicly denied. The Texans then hired Lovie Smith, who is black.
“The search for our head coach was very thorough and inclusive,” the Texans said in a statement Thursday. position and he remained a candidate until the very end. … In the end, we made the decision to hire Lovie Smith as our head coach and we believe he is the best fit for our team going forward.”
Since Flores’ initial complaint was filed, the 41-year-old has been hired as a senior defensive assistant and linebacker coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The NFL, meanwhile, announced changes to the Rooney Rule, including a requirement that every team must employ a female or minority coach as an offensive assistant.
The NFL and teams named as defendants in Flores’ lawsuit have yet to file formal responses in court. A first hearing in the case is scheduled for April 29.
