Some offered prayers. Karl Dorrell gave Chris Horton his shoulder. His shoulder and his word.
“He’d come up and talk to me,” Horton, the Baltimore Ravens’ special teams coordinator, said of Dorrell, his college coach at UCLA from 2004-07. “And it was probably a little tougher for me. I didn’t talk to my mom for maybe a couple days.”
This was August 2005, three kids ago. The Bruins’ preseason camp had been ratcheting down just as Hurricane Katrina was ramping up. Horton was a defensive back from New Orleans in those days, one of a half-dozen Louisiana natives on the UCLA roster.