Two Black coaches with significant NFL experience on Thursday joined the class-acton lawsuit that accuses the league and its teams of discrimination and paying lip service to minority hiring rules.
The litigation of former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores was joined by Steve Wilks, a former head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, and Ray Horton, who was most recently the defensive backs coach for the team now known as the Washington Commanders.
Wilks was in charge in Arizona in 2018 when the Cardinals finished 3-13.
Wilks “was discriminated against by the Arizona Cardinals” by being hired merely as a “bridge coach” and “not given any meaningful chance to succeed,” Flores’ amended lawsuit contends.
Arizona replaced Wilks with Kliff Kingsbury, a former head coach at Texas Tech University who had no NFL coaching experience. Kingsbury, who is white, went 35-40 in six college seasons, a sub-.500 mark, despite the services of future NFL star Patrick Mahomes in Lubbock.
The Cardinals have become a playoff contender under Kingsbury and dynamic quarterback Kyler Murray.
“Mr. Wilks, given the same opportunity afforded to Mr. Kingsbury, surely would have succeeded as well,” according to the lawsuit.
Wilks is now the defensive passing game coordinator for the Carolina Panthers.
“The decisions we made after the 2018 season were very difficult ones,” the Cardinals said in statement Thursday. “But as we said at the time, they were entirely driven by what was in the best interests of our organization and necessary for team improvement. We are confident that the facts reflect that and demonstrate that these allegations are untrue.”
Horton was the defensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans when, he alleges, he was put through a sham interview for the head job in Nashville to satisfy the NFL’s “Rooney Rule” requirement to interview minority candidates.
Horton was at home in Phoenix when, he alleges, he was called on Jan. 15, 2016, and told to board a last-second, late-night flight to Tennessee to meet with Amy Adams Strunk, the controlling owner of the Titans, to interview for the head coaching spot.
The “urgency of the request was, so Mr. Horton was told, due to the fact that” Strunk’s granddaughter “was competing in an equestrian event for which she had to get to Tampa, Florida on Saturday,” the lawsuit says.
“Thus, Mr. Horton took a red-eye flight on little notice to interview for the Titans” on Jan. 16, according to the lawsuit.
“As Mr. Horton now understands, the rush to interview him was an orchestrated attempt to make it appear that the Titans had complied with the Rooney Rule and otherwise appear to have given an equal opportunity to Black candidates so the team could announce the pre-made decision.”
