PJ Fleck gave Will Stein a lot of credit postgame

[bdkipe]

I know many of us get frustrated at Stein but in his postgame presser Fleck said that the offense Stein runs puts a ton of pressure on a defense because it creates so much space and then puts athletes in space. He spoke about how the only real way to defend it is to be absolutely disciplined and absolutely have your eyes right and then stay disciplined.

To me the beauty of that is it goes against human nature of how defensive football players are wired. Remember Colin Cowherd’s theory of, athletic ability being equal, you want cerebral thinkers on offense and the instinctual, quick reacting types on D.

With the advent of spread offensive and the Air Raid influences one of the ways that DC’s are trying to counter OC’s like Stein is to simply sit in shell or deep zones and giving you 3-5 yard stuff all day, banking on you getting impatient and making a mistake and then as the field naturally condenses near the red zone, their D schemes get more complicated.

It looked like Minn came out on D yesterday absolutely selling out in gaps and bringing heat against our scripted O.

I believe once we were off script, (3rd possession I think) Stein started using that to his advantage and thus the Perry lateral happened. That play was set up for a big gain too. Harley kind of botched it as was said earlier.

But once Stein was done with his script we absolutely gashed them and they were powerless. This was the most yards against them allowed in 3 seasons.

Maybe we ARE pretty damn lethal on offense if not playing in Biblical rain?

[pezsez1]

Yesterday was the first game I've seen in a long time where I wasn't constantly irritated by the playcalling. We combined a lethal power run game with a QB who's more than capable of hitting receivers downfield, and we gashed them through the air with an aggressive, chunk-yardage passing attack. It was simple and it worked.

The only play I didn't like was the gadget lateral. Yeah, it was close to working, and it would have been a big gain, but I just don't see the point. That should be the kind of play you pull out when nothing else is working and you're desperate for yardage. Oregon is doing such a great job lately at just lining up and running the ball normally that I don't see any real benefit to getting cute. As others have said, I'd be interested to see a series of all of Stein's gadget plays and see how many actually worked. Seems like most of them either go for very little or don't work at all, and even several that have worked seemed somewhat pointless in real time. (Like I think I remember a goal-line shovel pass against Penn State that seemed wildly unnecessary and created all kinds of additional risk... we could have just ran the ball.)

Still not a true believer, but we'll see how the rest of this season goes.

EDIT: Something to remember is this coaching staff is young. Stein is only 36. Granted, he's forgotten more about football than I'll ever know, but life experience is a powerful teacher and he's still young enough where he may not fully embrace the elegance of simplicity.

[73duck]

The negative posts about Stein in the game threads remind me of the howling over Nick Alioti years ago. He coached for a long time, including some of the best duck defenses (1994, 2005, 2010, and 2012) ever, but was savaged on the message boards.

Offense YPP under Stein since he came to Oregon has ranked #2, #3, and #13 (might be better this year without the monsoon games) nationally.

[StevensTechU]

The negative posts about Stein in the game threads remind me of the howling over Nick Alioti years ago. He coached for a long time, including some of the best duck defenses (1994, 2005, 2010, and 2012) ever, but was savaged on the message boards.

Offense YPP under Stein since he came to Oregon has ranked #2, #3, and #13 (might be better this year without the monsoon games) nationally.

Do you have access to points per drive rankings?

[73duck]

BCF Toys would have that. One would think that a team in the top ten in scoring per game, and the top 15 in yards per play (as Oregon is) would rank high. Pretty strong correlation, wouldn't you think?

[StevensTechU]

BCF Toys would have that. One would think that a team in the top ten in scoring per game, and the top 15 in yards per play (as Oregon is) would rank high. Pretty strong correlation, wouldn't you think?

Would hope so. But you also get teams like Iowa that play slow, don't have explosive plays, but are wonderfully efficient, so it's good to see.

[OrTDuck]

What I see, not including the weekend games (all non-garbage regulation drives):

Points Per Drive:

Oregon: 3.33 (#8)
USC: 3.71 (#2)

However, Points Allowed Per Drive:

Oregon: 1.13 (#4)
USC: 2.26 (#72)

Difference between offensive ppd and defensive ppd allowed:

Oregon: 2.21 (#3)
USC: 1.44 (#10)

[Phalanx]

I dunno, Iowa had all these impressive-sounding run defense stats before allowing 7.2 yards per carry for 261 total. They should have an an asterisk on these stats - *Team hasn't played Oregon yet

[buckmarkduck]

The negative posts about Stein in the game threads remind me of the howling over Nick Alioti years ago. He coached for a long time, including some of the best duck defenses (1994, 2005, 2010, and 2012) ever, but was savaged on the message boards.

Offense YPP under Stein since he came to Oregon has ranked #2, #3, and #13 (might be better this year without the monsoon games) nationally.

The stein complaining is crazy. He continues to put out top 10 units. Aliotti put out top 50 units, and bottom 10 3rd down D. Not the same thing. Nick A D didn’t get remotely better until Kelly made him change.

[ducks5ever]

The negative posts about Stein in the game threads remind me of the howling over Nick Alioti years ago. He coached for a long time, including some of the best duck defenses (1994, 2005, 2010, and 2012) ever, but was savaged on the message boards.

Offense YPP under Stein since he came to Oregon has ranked #2, #3, and #13 (might be better this year without the monsoon games) nationally.

The stein complaining is crazy. He continues to put out top 10 units. Aliotti put out top 50 units, and bottom 10 3rd down D. Not the same thing. Nick A D didn’t get remotely better until Kelly made him change.

Stein is a borderline top 10 highest paid OC in the country. (He's either #10 right now or 11-13). Does his offense perform like it's a top 10 offense in the country? Absolutely not. I won't even bother to look at what the rankings say right now because it's padded with straight up inferior competition. I don't care how many points he can put up on Oregon State or Oklahoma State. Let's look at games where he actually faces someone who has a talented defense... a game where he should be able to prove his worth on the field.

2023: he called a good game against Utah (which had a good defense). Good game against Oregon State (also a solid defense)
Called questionable games against UW (both times). But when you dig deeper and see that UW didn't have an impressive defense; he straight up underperformed when it mattered the most. The opposing DC straight up outcoached him. A theme throughout his time here.

2024: called decent games against Illinois, Michigan, and Washington. Called a great game against Penn State.
Ohio State @ home: called a good game, but I wouldn't say that the offense won us that game. Ohio State CFP - terrible.

2025: offense hasn't shown up when it matters. Now I get that there are lots of asteriks to go around this season. Ex. how should we evaluate the Penn State game? Offense did ok but for those saying that this was the plan, I'm not buying it at all. It was anyone's game in OT. The Iowa game admittedly had lots of calls against us that killed drives so the offense should have been able to get points. Indiana.... completely underperformed.

My issue with Stein isn't that he's a bad OC. He's a serviceable OC. I would love to eat my words at the end of this season, but serviceable doesn't win you big games, nor does it win you a championship. When you take into account the amount of talent on this team he should be able to go up against anyone in the country. The problem is that he has repeatedly shown that he's not able to do that. Speaking of which, how much of this offense has he even recruited? From available data (247 recruiting profiles and social media), he's basically a ghost. I've been waiting for someone to hire him away from us after his first season here. It's unfortunate that I'm clearly not the only one who sees his limited potential.

[droop10]

The negative posts about Stein in the game threads remind me of the howling over Nick Alioti years ago. He coached for a long time, including some of the best duck defenses (1994, 2005, 2010, and 2012) ever, but was savaged on the message boards.

Offense YPP under Stein since he came to Oregon has ranked #2, #3, and #13 (might be better this year without the monsoon games) nationally.

The stein complaining is crazy. He continues to put out top 10 units. Aliotti put out top 50 units, and bottom 10 3rd down D. Not the same thing. Nick A D didn’t get remotely better until Kelly made him change.

Stein is a borderline top 10 highest paid OC in the country. (He's either #10 right now or 11-13). Does his offense perform like it's a top 10 offense in the country? Absolutely not. I won't even bother to look at what the rankings say right now because it's padded with straight up inferior competition. I don't care how many points he can put up on Oregon State or Oklahoma State. Let's look at games where he actually faces someone who has a talented defense... a game where he should be able to prove his worth on the field.

2023: he called a good game against Utah (which had a good defense). Good game against Oregon State (also a solid defense)
Called questionable games against UW (both times). But when you dig deeper and see that UW didn't have an impressive defense; he straight up underperformed when it mattered the most. The opposing DC straight up outcoached him. A theme throughout his time here.

2024: called decent games against Illinois, Michigan, and Washington. Called a great game against Penn State.
Ohio State @ home: called a good game, but I wouldn't say that the offense won us that game. Ohio State CFP - terrible.

2025: offense hasn't shown up when it matters. Now I get that there are lots of asteriks to go around this season. Ex. how should we evaluate the Penn State game? Offense did ok but for those saying that this was the plan, I'm not buying it at all. It was anyone's game in OT. The Iowa game admittedly had lots of calls against us that killed drives so the offense should have been able to get points. Indiana.... completely underperformed.

My issue with Stein isn't that he's a bad OC. He's a serviceable OC. I would love to eat my words at the end of this season, but serviceable doesn't win you big games, nor does it win you a championship. When you take into account the amount of talent on this team he should be able to go up against anyone in the country. The problem is that he has repeatedly shown that he's not able to do that. Speaking of which, how much of this offense has he even recruited? From available data (247 recruiting profiles and social media), he's basically a ghost. I've been waiting for someone to hire him away from us after his first season here. It's unfortunate that I'm clearly not the only one who sees his limited potential.

His offenses do perform like top 10 units, whether you want to ignore the stats or not. Other teams play inferior opponents as well, and I don’t recall many instances of the Ducks running up the score. They often take their foot off the pedal very early in the second half of blowouts.

Show me an offense that never has an occasional off day. Sometimes opposing defenses play well too! Also funny to not give credit to the offense for the Ohio game last year when they were the only team to put up more than 23 points against a historically great defense, and the defense gave up 31 points. That’s just trying to avoid giving him any credit to prove your point. He has an offense with 1 returning starter from the previous year averaging 40 points per game. That’s not easy to do, no matter how much you try to downplay it.

[bdkipe]

Preach Droop! The Stein hate is mind-boggling.

[ducks5ever]

Show me an offense that never has an occasional off day. Sometimes opposing defenses play well too! Also funny to not give credit to the offense for the Ohio game last year when they were the only team to put up more than 23 points against a historically great defense, and the defense gave up 31 points. That’s just trying to avoid giving him any credit to prove your point. He has an offense with 1 returning starter from the previous year averaging 40 points per game. That’s not easy to do, no matter how much you try to downplay it.

This isn't the point. It's unrealistic to expect an offense to play lights out every game, especially in a tougher conference like the Big 10. The problem is that he frequently gets outcoached when he faces a good defense [2024 regular season being a possible exception to this].

Ohio State (x2) last year, Penn State this year, Indiana this year, Iowa this year. Slow starts every game (and costed us a few of them too). It's one thing to just have an off day. It's a problem when it becomes a pattern.

Ohio State at home last year... I did say that he called a good game, but I don't think we win that one without the turnovers created by the defense and the on-side kick.

[OregonFan4Life]

I think the Minnesota game was arguably the best called game of Stein’s Oregon career. I always have thought he’s a very smart playcaller, but sometimes too smart for his own good. He creates these amazing gadget plays but often times they’re sabotaged by the fact that he is coaching 18-22 year old kids with only 1 returning starter from last year. They’re going to make mistakes and to me that’s limited by using the same formation/packages more consistently.

And on top of that we have a significant talent advantages over most defenses, including Indiana. It feels like he gets so hyper-focused on his gadget plays he forgets he has that talent advantage. The last two years he had very experienced QB’s that were able to execute and call out of his gadget plays but with Moore he doesn’t have that experience to rely on.

My biggest criticism of Stein was calling excessive gadget plays and constantly changing formation/packages which I feel sometimes ends up sabotaging promising drives. I just felt like the offense should’ve been simpler all along, like that TD to Sadiq at the end of the 2nd quarter, use Moore’s arm talent to throw a pass to the corner of the endzone and let the athletic freak TE jump up and catch, Minnesota cannot stop that. We don’t need much beyond that to defeat every defense in the nation not named Ohio State.

I feel that Stein’s true calling is to be an NFL OC. In the NFL you have reliable professionals with limited turnover allowing them to execute his gadget plays and you do need it more when the defenses are super talented, plus he’s not the best recruiter and he wouldn’t worry about that in the NFL. But as a college OC, he is good, but could be outstanding if he just simplifies things and puts his players in a position to out-talent the opponents.


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[73duck]

Everybody plays cupcakes. Oregon's SOS is #25 per ESPN, and I would guess that it would be higher if looking at opponent defenses, or considering the weather.