The Browns are getting closer to finding their defensive coordinator.
Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com reports that they are interviewing a pair of candidates in person this weekend. Texans defensive pass game coordinator Cory Undlin and Falcons defensive pass game coordinator Mike Rutenberg have advanced to this round of the search.
Undlin has worked for the Texans since 2023 and was the secondary coach for the 49ers for two years before moving to Houston. He spent the 2020 season as the Lions’ defensive coordinator.
Rutenberg moved to Atlanta for the 2025 season and worked under Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich for four seasons as the linebackers coach with the Jets.
When former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed his lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams in February 2022, the claim of systemic and chronic racial discrimination made it a landmark attack against the league. Flores’s efforts have had, to date, a much more significant impact.
Through a series of rulings during a four-year war over the question of whether the claims of Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton will be resolved in open court or (as the league strongly prefers) arbitration controlled by the Commissioner, Flores and company have torn down the league’s longstanding method for forcing employee legal claims into a secret, rigged, kangaroo court.
The problem is simple. The league wants civil cases filed against it to be determined not by an independent party but by the league itself. Finally, independent judges with the power to do so are telling the NFL that it cannot do so.
“The court’s decision recognizes that an arbitration forum in which the defendant’s own chief executive gets to decide the case would strip employees of their rights under the law,” attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor and David E. Gottlieb said Friday, after the latest decision scrapping the league’s practices. “It is long overdue for the NFL to recognize this and finally provide a fair, neutral and transparent forum for these issues to be addressed.”
And that’s really the next step. Instead of maintaining its current Hail Mary pass to the U.S. Supreme Court, the NFL should do the right thing and abandon the heavy-handed practice of insisting that lawsuits filed against the league be presided over by the Commissioner.
The Commissioner, who recently defended the practice by saying, essentially, “it was like that when I got here,” shouldn’t want to do it. It’s a hopeless and irreconcilable conflict of interest.
Few if any other companies attempt to stack the deck in such a laughable, third world, banana republic way. Most companies realize it’s more than sufficient to force employees into arbitration handled by one of the various companies (like the American Arbitration Association) that exist for that purpose.
It’s still a much better forum for corporate America than the traditional judge-and-jury process. Especially since the various companies that provide arbitration services tend to skew toward the interests of the businesses that are responsible for creating the system that funnels them so much business.
But that’s not good enough for the NFL. Its longstanding approach to arbitration is proof positive that it wants to completely control anything and everything it can.
Finally, the NFL is losing control over legal claims made by non-players. The consequences sweep far beyond Flores, Wilks, and Horton. Every other team and league employee who is compelled to agree to the arbitration term in their contracts now have a pathway to avoiding a fundamentally unfair and un-American approach to justice.
For that reason, maybe it will be useful for the league to keep pushing its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Assuming that at least five of the nine justices of the highest court in the country see this game for what it is, the end result will be a published opinion that becomes the law of the land as to the league, all of its teams, and every current and future employee who have no choice but to agree to a contract that forces them to allow the Commissioner to have final say over any and all grievances they ever may pursue.
The NFL’s secret, rigged, kangaroo court is on life support.
In the lawsuit filed four years ago by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores, the presiding judge has reversed a prior order sending some of the claims to arbitration. Now, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has concluded that all claims will be litigated in open court.
The ruling means that the Flores claims against the NFL, the Dolphins, the Giants, the Broncos, and the Texans will be handled in court, not arbitration. It also applies to the claims made by Steve Wilks against the Cardinals, and by Ray Horton against the Titans.
Friday’s decision flows from last year’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which denied arbitration as to the remaining Flores claims based on the NFL’s insistence that Commissioner Roger Goodell control the process. That same “fatal flaw” (as Judge Valerie Caproni described it) impacts all efforts to compel arbitration.
The league will undoubtedly fight the result. Although Goodell defended the practice during last week’s Super Bowl press conference, it is fundamentally unfair for the person hired and paid by the teams to be resolving legal claims made against his employers. No one in that position can be fair and impartial.
The NFL hates external oversight. It wants to control its business, and it hopes to keep any dirty laundry tightly under wraps.
The league previously filed a petition for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of whether the arbitration requirement is legitimate. Whatever the final outcome, it’s long overdue that the highest court in the country examine and resolve whether it’s appropriate for any organization to require employees to submit their legal claims not to an independent party but to the boss.
The Texans want to build a new team headquarters with indoor and outdoor practice fields in a Houston suburb, and they’ve gained support from Harris County to do so.
County commissioners voted today to approve an agreement to work with the Texans on building the headquarters on an 83-acre site in Bridgeland, about 35 miles from Houston, according to the Houston Chronicle. Currently, the Texans’ headquarters are at NRG Stadium, where they play their home games, and the team has had scheduling conflicts at times with the stadium being used for other events.
“To be able to move off-site would be more optimal for us,” Texans owner Cal McNair told the Houston Chronicle. “This would allow us to really be able to focus the organization and get us all in one place and not have all these distractions to the team. We want something world-class to match where we’re headed, and to be competitive on the business side and on the football side. I think this allows us to do this a little bit better.”
The plan is for the Texans to use 22 acres of the 83-acre development and the rest to be used by hotels, restaurants, entertainment events and other uses. The Texans plan to have their training camp at the facility and host high school football as well.
The Browns are looking at a candidate from the Texans for their defensive coordinator vacancy.
Per Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, the club has put in a request to interview Texans defensive passing game coordinator Cory Undlin for the role.
Undlin, 54, has been with the Texans since 2023, when DeMeco Ryans was hired as head coach. He followed Ryans from the 49ers, where he’d served as pass game specialist and secondary coach.
Notably, Undlin worked under former Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz with the Eagles from 2016-2019 as the club’s defensive backs coach. Undlin also worked on the Jaguars’ staff alongside new Browns head coach Todd Monken from 2009-2010.
Monken has said that he’d like to keep the same scheme Schwartz ran in Cleveland’s previous regime. Undlin’s familiarity with Schwartz would ostensibly aid in that endeavor.
