LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Kentucky found its football prodigy — not at Harvard, but at Oregon, by way of Louisville — and now it is handing Will Stein its dormant program, a headset and a piece of chalk with one simple instruction: Solve it.
Call it Good Will Hunting, college football edition. Kentucky announced the move just after 11 p.m. Monday night.
For the 36-year-old Stein, it’s a homecoming. His dad played for Jerry Claiborne. His mom is co-owns a cake shop in St. Matthews. They sat in games at Commonwealth Stadium, Section 128, Row 13, all through his childhood. His mom makes a mean orange juice cake. Stein wore red as a quarterback at Louisville. But today, you can paint it all blue.
“Growing up in Kentucky and sitting in the stands at UK games as a kid, I could only dream of one day leading the Wildcats,” Stein said. “This is truly a dream come true.”
Kentucky didn’t just hire a coach. It hired a formation-twisting tactician who turned Oregon’s offense into one of the toughest equations in the game.
Stein’s offense is based on sleight of handoff. Deception with a degree. It doesn’t just move fast. It lies to you.
There are no static sets. Fun with formations. The second he can make a defender think, “Wait. What?” He’s won. It’s over. It’s leverage. It’s a quick screen. It’s relief through the running game. Find your best players. Get the ball out fast. Play confident. Play free.
Feed the studs. You’ll hear that a lot. It’s a line Stein heard a lot as a quality control coach for Bobby Petrino at Louisville.
Stein’s quarterbacks get simple reads and can recognize mismatches from memory. They have more safe outlets than a Home Depot power strip.
“How do I make it easy? How do I make it simple? How do I allow them to play fast and free?” Stein told the Eugene Register-Guard last summer.
That’s the core of his system. Not innovation for innovation’s sake, but for clarity. For his own players. Quarterbacks don’t have to be magicians. Just decisive.
It reminds me of something Charlie Strong, then coach at Louisville, told me about Stein.
“A lot of times my man thinks he’s Brett Favre,” Strong said. “I just tell him, I need you to manage the offense. Don’t go out there and try doing anything great.”
Urban Meyer, who’s schemed against some of the best, in September called Stein’s Oregon offense “the hardest to defend in America.” He said it was because of Stein’s willingness to use “deceptives.” Not necessarily trick plays, but trick looks, trick formations, little things that, yes, confuse a defense, but also give his players an edge.
For Kentucky, this is more than a coaching change. It’s a complete system reboot.
Mark Stoops gave Kentucky toughness, stability, and recruiting muscle. But the offense often lagged behind. It didn’t stress defenses. It didn’t excite quarterbacks. It didn’t inspire SportsCenter segments.
Kentucky has lived in the land of 21-17. Of power runs and third-down disappointment.
Safe to say those days are over. Now the question facing Stein is how he will build a program, fill a staff, handle the massive responsibility of being a head coach.
Stein’s roots are in Louisville. A Trinity star who walked on at Louisville. "I'd have paid them to play," he said.
I remember covering his first college start. He might’ve been the only guy in the stadium who cared about that game. It was against Arkansas State. The last game he’d started in that stadium was in front of more than 37,000 when he led Trinity past St. X in a state championship. On this day in 2009, the crowd was barely 21,000.
I’m not kidding you, the only thing you could hear getting onto the suite elevator was the sound of vacuum cleaners.
But outside the locker room, Stein was fired up. When Arkansas State looked at him and said, ‘That’s you’re quarterback?” He said “Yeah, and we’re coming right at you.”
Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe said he had to talk Stein “off the ledge” every once in a while. How often? “Every time he comes off the field, basically.”
Stein was a walk-on. Instant energy He didn’t get meal money after the game. He had to find his parents to take him to dinner.
He's coming back home a lot wealthier. But no less hungry.
He knows what it’s like to be doubted. He knows what it’s like to have to earn his place. He went from Louisville to Texas with Strong, and when Strong was fired stayed to coach high school football, then became an assistant at UTSA, rising to coordinator before being hired by Dan Laning at Oregon, where 3,000-yard, 30-touchdown passing seasons have become the expectation.
Stein told me that day of his first college start that he was used to being looked down on. He said I should’ve seen him in his youth league days.
“You couldn’t even see me behind the line,” he said. “You’d just see the ball coming out.”
Finding a lane, an open man, and delivering the ball. Not much has changed.
Apples and oranges? Maybe.
You like apples? Will Stein just became a head coach in the SEC. At Kentucky.
How do you like them apples?
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