Mostly agree.Stein has been solid this year ever since the Indiana game. This is one of the few years in my history as a duck fan that i've actually been pleased with our play-calling. Stein has been very good since Indiana.
I feel two things happened after that game:
1) Lanning told him to press the downfield attack. After the Indiana loss, Lanning specifically said in his press conference that we needed to do a much better job of attacking "in all phases of the game," but the offense stalling out was the glaring weakness of that game. I believe that was Lanning's way of stating what everyone was thinking without throwing Stein under the bus. But I do believe he and Stein had a chat and got on the same page going forward.
2) Mother Nature forced Stein to discover the running game. Yeah, we ran it up against lolRutgers, but torrential rain forced us to run against two very good run defenses, and finding that run game really fueled the offense to big games against Minnesota and USC.
My only real complaint about Stein after the Indiana game was his unwavering desire to get cute when it wasn't ever necessary. I know it was cool on Ducks vs Them, but I wasn't a fan of handing off to Boettcher with the game still close against USC. Or the slow-developing RPO rather than a quick run up the middle that would have been the dagger against UW. Or passing the ball on 3rd and 3 when the run game is clicking and it's four-down territory. Or just weird formations or gadget plays that end up failing when we could just throw it to Sadiq. Seems like in every game there are two or three plays where he just kind of f***s around and doesn't really put winning first. I know it's just two or three plays, but still, why???? I mean if one of our defensive backs tried to do a cartwheel before making a tackle he'd be benched in a heartbeat.
