The greatest coaching tragedy in Oregon history

Justin Herbert played four seasons at Oregon and was a wonderful college quarterback. He's second all-time on the Ducks in wins, yards and touchdowns for a career, even with sitting behind Dakota Prukop for five games as a freshman and missing five as a sophomore after Willie Taggart elected to use him as a goal-line running back.

He won a Rose Bowl as a senior and piloted a team that went 12-2, blossoming into a first-round NFL draft pick (No. 6 overall) despite playing for three different head coaches in four seasons.

But the real tragedy of his college career is that he never got to play for Will Stein.

Herbert came to the Ducks at exactly the wrong time. His first season in 2016 was a disaster, a 4-8 debacle with a crumbling culture. Even then he showed his potential, throwing 19 touchdowns against just four picks over eight starts, beating No. 11 Utah 30-28 in Rice-Eccles Stadium.

The Ducks trailed 14-3 late in the fourth quarter. Herbert led four touchdown drives over the final 15:27 of the game to win 30-28, finding Darren Carrington in the left corner of the end zone for a 17-yard touchdown with two seconds to play.

Herbert had more pure arm talent than any quarterback who has come through the Oregon program and that includes some legendary passers. He had the misfortune to play for Mark Helfrich, Willie Taggart and Mario Cristobal and some woeful offensive coordinators, and that held him back in his development.

The Ducks lost games that he could have taken over. They lost games that shouldn't have been close, like Stanford in 2018 and 2019.

He threw for 489 yards and four touchdowns as a true freshman in a 54-35 win over Arizona State.

Under Will Stein and his predecessor Kenny Dillingham, the Ducks run the most quarterback-friendly offense in college football. It has balance and explosiveness. They've brought out the best in two retread quarterbacks, producing back-to-back Heisman finalists.

Herbert was a 6-6 wunderkind and intelligent, a 4.0 student in biology. Stein would have made him a 4,000-yard quarterback with 35 touchdowns, four seasons in a row. What Helfrich, Taggart and Cristobal did with him was criminal, a complete waste of God-given talent.

Had the OCs of his era known how to use and develop him, he probably would be even further along as a player.

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