The Riverwalk cruise boat glided along underneath bridges of twinkling Christmas lights and to the steady hum of adoring UTSA faithful, commemorating a second consecutive Conference USA title for the Roadrunners in December 2022.
But the program’s young offensive architect was missing. A couple of hours before the celebration commenced in San Antonio, Will Stein got his call-up. He was announced as the new offensive coordinator at Oregon.
And for how truly elated Stein was to climb the next rung of the college football coaching ladder, he was simultaneously all torn up.
“When you surround yourself with great people, it doesn’t matter the logo, the level of job or the pay or anything,” Stein said last week. “Change is hard.”
His former boss, one of the most influential voices in Stein’s life, knew the trajectory he was on back when they first met. Stein started as a quality control analyst at Texas in 2015, the same year Jeff Traylor was hired to coach special teams and tight ends for the Longhorns. It was then that Traylor knew two things: He was going to find a way to hire Stein to his staff when he became a head coach. And Stein wouldn’t be in one place long.
“We cried like babies,” said Traylor, the UTSA head coach. “We’re kindred spirits. Now I’m not saying I’m the savant Will Stein is. I just told him he had to go.”
Now look at him. At 35, Stein is considered one of the game’s premier play callers, the offensive maestro of the only remaining unbeaten team and the No. 1 seed in this year’s College Football Playoff. The Ducks start their march toward a national title on New Year’s Day against No. 8-seeded Ohio State at the Rose Bowl. Sooner than later, his name will emerge as the primary target for a notable program, as it did with his predecessor, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham.
The matchup is set 🌹#GoDucks x #CFBPlayoff pic.twitter.com/e4uwcef0ZA
— Oregon Football (@oregonfootball) December 22, 2024
At the moment, the Oregon Ducks are soaring, thanks in part to the mind of their fearless coordinator, who friends and former players say is never afraid of the limelight of the big moment. It’s quite the opposite, actually. Stein’s rolodex of play calls is so deep that the more stressful the situation, the easier it is for him to scheme for. Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said Stein’s adaptability and lack of ego are among Stein’s indispensable traits: “We’ve got a great offensive staff around him that he pulls a lot of ideas from. I think he works really well with other people.”
That’s the consensus. But it starts with Stein.
“He’s got a great big football brain,” said Hank Carter, head coach at Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas, who hired Stein to be his offensive coordinator in 2018.
That aptitude has been shaped by life as an undersized quarterback who walked on at his hometown university, Louisville, in 2009 and became the team’s starter in 2011 only to see an injury sideline him and a talented quarterback named Teddy Bridgewater take his place. His Louisville player bio started with: “heady quarterback.” As his playing days dwindled, he realized he had the schematic knowledge to coach.
“Whatever you think might be on the cutting edge and crazy,” Traylor said, “he won’t be afraid to do it.”
Stein said his blueprint has been constructed through a collection of memories and lessons from his time playing for innovative coaches at Trinity High in Louisville and working under Bobby Petrino, Tom Herman, Traylor, Carter and dozens of other minds he says are more brilliant than his.
“When you’re a young person and you’re around forward-thinking people, it forces you to be forward-thinking,” Stein said. “Everything is still inside zone, outside zone, power, counter, four verts, curl flat — it’s just how you dress it up and create eye candy for the defense, repping it and getting really good at it.”
In two short years, the Ducks have become experts.
Stein has helped two transfer quarterbacks at Oregon became Heisman Trophy finalists. In 2023, Bo Nix broke the NCAA record for highest completion percentage in a single season, completing 77 percent of his passes. Nix, who was later drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos, also broke Oregon single-season school records for completions (364), passing yards (4,508) and touchdown passes (45).
Nix’s stellar year under Stein was an obvious selling point to Nix’s successor, former Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel. And like Nix, Gabriel broke records at Oregon, becoming the player with most total touchdowns in college football history (183) and breaking Nix’s career record for starts in a career (62).
For a quarterback, Gabriel said playing under Stein can be described as simply as, “shooter’s shoot.” Translation: There should always be an open player on a pass play. Former UTSA quarterback Frank Harris said Stein’s playbook is not designed to provide quarterbacks with headaches. In fact, it’s designed to be simple for them and flummoxing for the defense. An ideal reality for any play caller and quarterback, one which isn’t achieved all that often.
Stein’s approach is, as Harris explained, a spread-designed offense replete with run-pass options (RPO) for the quarterback to either hand off to the tailback or tuck it and take it himself. Which is commonplace for most of college football in 2024.
And why does it work so well regardless of the quarterback?
“You just don’t know what it’s ever going to be,” Harris said. “It may be a simple shift or motion that may be a run and you can have the exact same shift and motion then it’s an RPO. You may have the exact shift and motion and now it’s a play action. Then the same exact thing you have a pass to play off it. You just can’t say whenever they line up in this formation they’re going to do this, because you just don’t know.”
What has become one basic Stein tenet: Test the rules of the opposing defense and its limits with misdirection.
“We can beat you in multiple ways,” he said of the Ducks. “We’ve shown an ability to go over the top on some of the best defenses in the country and also seen us with the ability to ground and pound and run it to win. Not every week looks the exact same from us. We have a core nucleus of plays and concepts, but we just try to dress it up each week and try to make it hard on the defense to defend.”
On the surface, Oregon’s offensive output is impressive in 2024. The Ducks rank 14th in total offense, 14th in passing offense and 15th in scoring offense. But it’s deep in the weeds where it becomes more clear why the Ducks are such an effective offense.
During Stein’s two years at Oregon, the Ducks are ranked first or second offensively in myriad categories, according to TruMedia Stats, including:
| Category | Rank |
|---|---|
|
57.5 percent of plays gain 4+ yards |
First |
|
44.3 average yards gained per drive |
First |
|
1.9 percent sack rate allowed |
First |
|
7.2 yards per play |
Second |
|
74.1 percent red zone TD rate |
Second |
|
50 percent third-down conversion rate |
Second |
|
20.5 percent pressure rate allowed |
Second |
The motto that Stein deploys wherever he goes is remembered by most everyone.
Carter laughed and said: “Feed the studs.”
Harris, too: “It’s to feed your beasts.”
Former Oregon wide receiver Troy Franklin, also drafted by the Broncos last year: “Feed the playmakers.”
It’s a creed Stein picked up when he was a quality control analyst at his alma mater in 2014 under Petrino when he saw Petrino find a way to prioritize former Louisville star DeVante Parker, who went on to average 142 yards receiving that year.
“Get your best players the ball as many times as you can,” Stein said.
Will Stein is in his bag pic.twitter.com/cM16nIgLMO
— Austin 🦆 (@deviousduck_) December 8, 2024
And at a program like Oregon, known for its own offensive prowess dating back to the Chip Kelly heydays, those players are the types of elite talents that can collectively spearhead a conference title winner and top Playoff seed.
“He made it really simple for us,” said Franklin, who had his best year with the Ducks in 2023 under Stein with 1,383 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns. “He said, ‘You guys just do what you do.’ I think he does a good job scheming up the offense to get guys open and get them the ball.”
1. Tempo to Empty Quads Diamond + Smoke Screen pic.twitter.com/Vi2YfHLfY5
— Coach Dan Casey (@CoachDanCasey) December 8, 2024
Like Nix, Gabriel has had a glut of receivers who were often open, including Tez Johnson, Traeshon Holden, Evan Stewart and Terrance Ferguson. Gabriel’s 2024 Heisman finalist season stat line: 28 touchdowns, six interceptions, 3,558 passing yards, seven rushing touchdowns and a 73.2 percent completion rate, the highest of his decorated career.
“As soon as he got to Oregon, I knew he was going to blow up because of the resources they have and they always have good players,” Carter said. “Where else would you want to call an offense other than Oregon? Where else would you rather play offense?”
Harris said while the terminology and hand signals of Stein’s playbook has long changed since his days at UTSA, every time he tunes in to watch the Ducks, he can’t help but chuckle a bit.
“If I’m being honest, everybody copycats each other in college football,” he said, “but I could watch a game and call out 90 to 95 percent of Oregon’s plays. They’re just fun to watch.”
When Stein was a 5-foot-10, 185-pound quarterback at Louisville from 2008 to 2012, he became a cult figure in Cardinals lore. Stein’s mother, Debbie, snapped a photo of Stein with a big smile on his face and flashing a thumbs up after a Louisville win in 2009 that the fan base made into a meme. From then on, he became “Sunny Will Stein” to folks in his hometown and in social media circles of Cardinals devotees.
Beyond the X’s and O’s, Stein is beloved by his colleagues and players.
“Every day is sunshine with Will,” Traylor said.
“His emotional intelligence is off the charts,” Carter said.
Harris also believes Stein is in that sweet spot of an age for players to be able to level with. The two used to go at it over who got to pick the day’s background music during film study and the week’s offensive install. Like any true son of Louisville, Stein chose rapper Jack Harlow. Harris often asked for country, but Stein insisted.
“He’s like an uncle,” Harris said. “He’s old enough where you have respect for him, but he’s young enough that you can still have regular conversations. That’s very unique.”
No stranger to playing in quarterback-friendly systems, Gabriel, who also starred at UCF before Oklahoma, said Stein’s empowerment to the players from the film room all the way to on the sidelines on game day has been helped him unlock a level of himself he’s been waiting to see.
“The ownership in making it yours and allowing us to be in a position to lead,” Gabriel said. “I’ve never gone into a game uncomfortable.”
Oregon is trying to do something it’s yet to accomplish: hoist a national title trophy. In Oregon’s 32-31 win over Ohio State in October in Eugene, the Ducks had 496 yards of total offense — its third-highest offensive output of the year. In the Playoff, the Ducks will entrust the great big football brain of Will Stein to do battle with defenses that have yet to solve his riddles.
— The Athletic’s Nick Kosmider contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Chris Pietsch / The Register-Guard / USA Today)
