With Maulers in USFL title game, Ray Horton lobbies for son Jarren to get his due in coaching ranks

CANTON, Ohio — It took 30 years and stops at seven NFL destinations for Ray Horton to secure a head coaching job at any level of football. And it came not in the sport’s most decorated league but rather in the upstart USFL.

Horton, the former Steelers assistant who was part of three Super Bowl teams as a player and coach, is doing everything in his power to drastically reduce that wait time for his son.

Horton, 63, came out of retirement this year to coach the Pittsburgh Maulers alongside Jarren Horton, the team’s 31-year-old assistant head coach and defensive coordinator. While Ray Horton has gotten credit for navigating the Maulers from a one-win season in 2022 to the league’s championship game Saturday night against Birmingham, he will tell everyone who will listen that the team really is Jarren’s.

And he’s hoping they are, in fact, listening.

“He’s ready to be a head coach,” Horton said about Jarren, whose work with the Maulers this year led to his being named the USFL’s assistant coach of the year. “If people would give the opportunity to him that they’ve given to other people, why can’t he be a young coach in the NFL? They do it for other people.

“He’s light years ahead of where I was and where I probably am. Is he a better coach than me, I’d say yes.”

After earning two Super Bowl rings as secondary coach of the Steelers in the 2000s, Ray Horton spent two years as defensive coordinator in Arizona, two more in Cleveland (over two stints) and two in Tennessee. He never ascended any higher, however, and when he joined Brian Flores’ groundbreaking lawsuit against the NFL last year while in retirement, he aimed at proving his interview for the Titans head coaching job in 2016 was a “sham” to adhere to the Rooney Rule. The job went to Mike Mularkey, a white coach and another former Steelers assistant.

To avoid any distractions from the Maulers’ unexpected ascent from 1-9 to the USFL title game with a 5-6 record, including playoffs, Horton opened a news conference Friday with a prepared statement about the Flores lawsuit.

Saying he wanted to address the “elephant in the room,” Horton asked that the focus of the game be centered on his players. He declined to take questions about the lawsuit.

“I feel what we have accomplished as a team this year, going worst to first, took a combination of motivation and intellectual acuity, organizational skill, the ability to establish a culture built on respect, hard work and professionalism,” he said. “I believe one of the core tenets of a great head coach is to elevate a group of athletes to heights they did not know they could achieve themselves. That being said, I know unequivocally I would have taken an NFL franchise to the Super Bowl if given the opportunity. If you doubt that, ask any of my living resumes which are my former and current players this question: Were they not better off after I arrived than before.”

Horton is determined to make sure Jarren doesn’t encounter the same obstacles. Despite his young age and a modest background as a college assistant, Jarren was hired as Maulers defensive coordinator in 2022. When Ray Horton replaced Kirby Wilson as head coach, he handed much of the Maulers’ responsibility to his son.

The result? The Maulers allowed the fewest points and yards and forced the most turnovers in the 10-team USFL this season.

“This is how we envisioned it when we got together in the offseason,” Ray Horton said. “It was Jarren’s team because he was here last year. I trusted him that he knew exactly what he was talking about and what he wanted. He was more experienced in the spring league than I was. We leaned on Jarren’s vision to what the team wanted to look like. We’re close.”

Jarren Horton recalls as a kid sitting in meeting rooms at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex when Dick LeBeau was fine-tuning his zone-blitz defense.

“I didn’t know all the ins and outs, but being around and hearing stuff, you pick it up,” he said. “(My dad’s) defense is an offshoot of coach LeBeau’s defense, and this defense is an offshoot of that defense.”

Jarren Horton’s rise to a head coaching position could happen with the Maulers if his father heads back into retirement. The NFL, of course, is the ultimate destination

“That remains to be seen,” Jarren Horton said. “It’s more a testament to the guys out there. They are the ones making plays. I’m just sitting there calling them. They are the ones executing. It’s not really me. It’s the guys on the field.”

Given the way the Maulers have turned around their season by rallying from 1-3 and 2-6 starts, Jarren Horton has made a believer out of his Maulers players.

“He’s super passionate, and you can see that by the way he’s constantly looking for us to improve,” said Maulers defensive back Tre Tarpley, a Central Catholic graduate. “Even when we’re winning, he’s always focused on ways we can get better. He trusts us. I think that is the biggest thing. He knows when this thing happens, he trusts his players are going to make plays. He puts us in a position to do that and he’s willing to adjust.”