RJ Young
FOX Sports National College Football Analyst
The best offensive coordinator in college football is at Oregon, and his name is Will Stein.
No, Stein wasn’t a Broyles Award finalist. Head coaches have to nominate coordinators so Broyles Award voters can vote for them. If he’s not nominated, we can’t vote for him. The last two years, Oregon coach Dan Lanning has nominated defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi for the honor of being named the nation’s best assistant coach.
Coach Will Stein of the Oregon Ducks walks to the stadium before a game against Oklahoma State.
Winning an award like that can turn a coordinator into a head coach. But that won’t be the reason Stein isn’t the head coach at a Power 4 school sooner rather than later. He’s made a habit of earning every opportunity, and he’s always wanted the chance to help his team make a play. That has been what his coaching life is about.
Stein knows what it’s like to earn it. After leading Louisville Trinity to a high school state championship, he walked on at Louisville in 2008. He spent three years working at it, chopping wood, head down and hunting in an era when there was no such thing as plotting for the portal, sitting out after four games and taking a redshirt, and no money to chase from a millionaire booster who handles losing like a toddler teething.
As an upperclassman at Louisville in 2011, Stein stood at 5-foot-10 and 181 pounds. He was in a fierce quarterback competition heading into that season, and former head coach Charlie Strong didn’t mince words surrounding the QB battle.
“Somebody’s got to step up and go lead this football team,” Strong said at the time. “The quarterback is so critical … It’s a position that [is] the point of interest of our staff.”
Stein earned the beginning job and was set to be the sort of quarterback that followers inform definitive come-up tales about: a participant who wager on himself, walked the tightrope of Energy 4 competitors, after which took the keys to run the offense. After which, nearly as quickly because it began for Stein, it was over.
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The scoreboard learn 7-3 in favor of the Cardinals. Stein fled a pocket that collapsed like a ton of bricks cascading down the Grand Canyon and took successful. He landed on his proper shoulder — his throwing shoulder. In a recreation with a dizzying deluge of feelings for a hometown child, Stein was compelled to go away the 2011 Kentucky-Louisville rivalry and provides approach to true freshman Teddy Bridgewater.
Bridgewater completed the sport and led the Cardinals to a 24-17 win over their intrastate rival. He acquired the beginning the next week and promptly threw for 221 yards, two touchdowns and a pair of interceptions, after which began each recreation for the rest of the season.
Will Stein #4 of the Louisville Cardinals reacts in opposition to the Florida Gators through the Allstate Sugar Bowl. (Picture by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Photographs)
That was it for Stein as a beginning school quarterback. He started teaching two years later, whereas Bridgewater, now 32-years-old, remains to be enjoying quarterback within the NFL. The margins are at all times that shut on this sport.
It is no shock that Stein was invited to remain at Louisville as a graduate assistant for Sturdy and a top quality management assistant for Bobby Petrino. He earned an MBA at Louisville after which made his approach to Austin, Texas, to observe Sturdy in 2015 as a top quality management assistant and finally as his quarterbacks coach.
When Sturdy was fired following the 2017 season, Stein stayed native and commenced successful on probably the most aggressive and visual scene in American highschool sports activities: Texas highschool soccer.
Serving as the college’s offensive coordinator, Stein’s Lake Travis groups went 26-4 with back-to-back appearances within the Texas state semifinals. As part of his plan to construct UTSA right into a Group of 6 powerhouse, highschool soccer legend Jeff Traylor employed Stein together with a bunch of former Texas highschool soccer coaches in 2020. By 2022, Stein was operating Traylor’s Roadrunner offense.
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Watch any Will Stein-led offense, and also you’ll see a system constructed on solutions. His scheme leans on fast screens and play-action passes that simplify reads, present protected shops for quarterbacks, and permit playmakers to show quick throws into explosive positive factors.
Talking at a clinic for Glazier, Stein led a lecture titled “Feed the Studs,” which centered round his offensive philosophy. His roadmap to success contains recruiting elite-level gamers, placing them in place to succeed, and calling performs that run a funnel from the quarterback to their fingers like a duck fattened to make foie gras.
Stein makes use of motions, stacks and bunches to confuse opposing defenses and make them change coverages on the fly. Impulsively, a nook or linebacker cannot simply fall into inside or exterior approach. Impulsively, a security prepared to come back downhill is on his heels. Leverage is created and baked into the offense for wideouts to get to a spot and be completely aligned with the quarterback.
“Clear up issues with formations to get your greatest participant the ball,” Stein mentioned. “Do not add extra performs. Add extra methods to assault the protection with formation changes.”
Oregon’s Dakorien Moore was the top-ranked large receiver prospect within the 2025 class and has already made an on the spot affect for Will Stein’s offense. (Picture by Ali Gradischer/Getty Photographs)
Stein makes use of quick yardage go performs to advertise not simply confidence in his quarterback, however to reward his prime playmakers.
“Y’all know what it’s when a child comes off the sphere and says ‘Gimme the ball, Coach,'” Stein mentioned. “Properly, more often than not they’re proper. It is your greatest participant saying that.
“I do not thoughts confrontation with children wanting the soccer as a result of normally those which can be saying which can be those who’ve earned it.”
Stein designed his scheme not solely to unravel issues earlier than the snap, however to construct an offense that gamers aspire to be a part of and earn the privilege to make performs in. He’s been that sort of participant and coach all through his profession.
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Quick-forward to current day, the place Stein is in his third season with Oregon, working hand-in-hand with head coach Dan Lanning whereas main probably the most explosive offenses within the sport.
Dante Moore #5 of the Oregon Geese warms up throwing the soccer through the first half of a recreation in opposition to Oklahoma State. (Picture by Robin Alam/ISI Photographs/ISI Photographs by way of Getty Photographs)
After main an offense that averaged greater than 470 yards and 34.9 factors per recreation final season, which was tops within the Huge Ten, Stein has the Geese off to a blazing begin by the primary two video games of the 2025 marketing campaign. With sophomore quarterback Dante Moore underneath middle and a bevy of gifted playmakers surrounding him, Oregon has put up 128 factors by two video games, the third-highest whole amongst FBS packages.
Stein isn’t any stranger to these forms of explosive offensive numbers. In 4 years as an offensive playcaller, his groups have gone 36-6 with a quarterback that has thrown for not less than 3,800 yards and 30 touchdowns yearly. And, by the way in which, Stein does not flip 36 till later this month.
Heading into the Geese’ first street recreation of the season, a Week 3 matchup in opposition to Northwestern (midday ET Saturday on FOX and the FOX Sports activities app), the query is not how good this Oregon staff is — it is who’s going to have the ability to cease them?
Ohio State may elevate a hand. Although the Buckeyes aren’t on Oregon’s schedule this yr. They had been the one staff to utterly tar and feather the Oregon offense through the Will Stein period, dealing with the Geese, 41-21, within the Rose Bowl. Dillon Gabriel was underneath fixed duress, and Stein had no solutions for his quarterback, who seemed as if he was making an attempt to translate a chalkboard filled with Egyptian hieroglyphics underwater on Uranus.
There’s nonetheless a ultimate boss to beat past the Buckeyes. It is the rising weight of being probably the most completed packages within the nation with zero nationwide titles to point out for it.
Till then, there’ll nonetheless be one factor left to do.
RJ Younger is a nationwide school soccer author and analyst for FOX Sports activities. Comply with him at @RJ_Young.
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