Report: Baylor to Hire AJ Steward from Oregon State as RB Coach, Assistant Head Coach

Jan 17, 2023 - 7:05 PM

If you have been waiting with bated breath for Baylor to finally fill out its coaching ranks after an offseason of some turmoil, wait no longer! According to reports from ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg and SicEm365, Baylor will hire AJ Steward from Oregon State as its new RB coach (and Assistant Head Coach, per the update below), replacing Juice Johnson after his departure for Texas Tech. From Twitter:

As noted above, Steward played Big 12 football as a tight end at Kansas from 2007 to 2011 before getting into coaching, first with Rice from 2012 to 2017, then with stops at BYU (2018-2019, hence the connection to Grimes), Arizona (2020), and Oregon State (2021 to today). He has been the RB coach at each of those four places pre-Baylor, and at Oregon State, he coached the 2021 Pac 12 leader in rushing, coincidentally named BJ Baylor. (Their) Baylor finished that season with 227 carries for 1,331 yards, which was good for 16th in the country. If you recall, our own Abram Smith finished with a Baylor (the school) record 1,601 rushing yards that year, good for fourth in the country.

There’s not a tremendous amount out there about Steward beyond that, but I will update the post with any feedback I see in the near term from Twitter. For now, throw Coach Steward a follow (request, his profile is protected) at @Coach_Steward and join me in welcoming him back to the Big 12 and Waco!

UPDATE: Apparently, we are hiring Steward as Assistant Head Coach, as well. It is not immediately apparent what that will mean.