By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            AJ Steward sees coaching as a ministry and each stop on his journey as an assignment, not just another job. 

            "It's just all God," said Steward, whose latest assignment brought him to Waco in January as Baylor football's assistant head coach and running backs coach. 

            "I really feel like my calling in this profession is to be as far away from comfort as possible. He challenges me to expand my horizons. Any job I've ever had, I can't say it's because I'm the greatest coach. I know God does that for a reason." 
 
            This time, he picked a place that's roughly 11 hours and 725 miles away from his hometown of St. Louis, Mo. 

            "This feels like home," said Steward, whose wife, Virginia, is a native of Dallas. AJ met his wife in Houston, where his coaching journey began as an offensive graduate assistant with head coach David Bailiff and offensive coordinator John Reagan.

            But truthfully, coaching college football was never the plan. Even as a football player at the University of Kansas, he listed his dream job as being a "successful high school football and basketball coach."

            "It never even crossed my mind to coach college ball," he said. "I was planning on graduating, going back to St. Louis, finding a teaching job and then working my way into coaching. I did Pro Day and didn't get any calls, didn't get drafted. I always knew I didn't want to do the CFL and try all these professional leagues. That had a short life, even if it had worked out."

            Raised by a single mom, Karla Rose, AJ and his younger brother, DJ, were "brought up in a really tough neighborhood where we saw things that we thought were normal."

            "But being where I am now, I wouldn't want my boys to be exposed or even have the threat of some of things that we had to encounter daily," he said. "I just know God's hand was on our lives the whole time."

            With a support system that included their maternal grandparents, AJ and DJ were kept busy with sports and stayed away from the trouble waiting on seemingly every corner. 

            "My grandma instilled this standard of morality that sticks with me to this day," AJ said. "So, when I get in those situations where there was peer pressure, I would always have this voice in my head telling me not to get involved. Sure enough, something bad would happen. In the moment, you don't see it from a Godly perspective. You're just thinking, 'Whew, I dodged a bullet.' But when I say glory to God, there's testimony behind it."

            A three-sport standout at Riverview Gardens, where he also earned all-conference honors in baseball and basketball, AJ was a dual-threat quarterback who accounted for 33 combined touchdowns while also picking off seven passes and earning all-state honors at defensive back.

            Signing with Kansas, AJ went in expecting to challenge at quarterback. 

            "Lo and behold, I get there and Todd Reesing is the quarterback," Steward said, "and he's the best quarterback in program history."

            Although he was named the Scout Team Offensive Player of the Year as a freshman in 2007, AJ said it was a humbling experience going from being "one of the best players in my high school's history to not even getting a single rep in practice."

            "It was a good experience, that was the year we went to the Orange Bowl," he said. "It's mainly that first day of camp where you get zero reps. Once we got through camp, I was a little more at peace and felt like I was actually contributing to the team. It's just that initial shock of being really humbled by that experience."

            Transitioning to wide receiver and eventually tight end, AJ got the chance to get on the field and also see the game from different perspectives. 

            "As a coach now, it's the best thing that could have ever happened to me," he said. "It was easy for me to move to a different position because I was an athlete and played different things in high school, on top of playing quarterback. The hardest part was just that freshman year, not playing in the games."

            In his final semester at Kansas, where he earned an undergrad degree in physical education, AJ was heading home for a break when he got a random call from former Jayhawk teammate Adrian Mayes. 

            "He was a couple years older, but he had started coaching down at Rice as a (graduate assistant)," AJ said. "Adrian called and asked if I knew of anybody that we had played with that might be interested in a GA job. That was the first time I had even thought about potentially coaching college. I told him I was planning on coaching high school ball, but I wouldn't mind doing this for a couple years and going back as a better coach from it."

            Just happy to have a job, AJ didn't find out until he got to Rice that he was actually helping offensive coordinator John Reagan with the running backs. 

           Assuming that he was going to work with the receivers or tight ends, "if he had told me that over the phone, I may not have even taken the job," Steward said jokingly.
           
             "I was thinking I was more of a high school coach, so I was already a little insecure just walking into a college building."

            Reagan trusted AJ enough to let him lead five minutes of an individual drill during one of the early fall camp workouts that first year. 

            "Just how I was raised, when people give you opportunities, you always want to exceed their expectations," he said. "Luckily, he told me this in the morning, so I had a couple hours to get on YouTube and find a drill I really liked. I'm doing the drill, and I look over, and I remember seeing (Reagan) nodding his head. And during one of the breaks, he said, 'Man, I really liked that drill. That's some good stuff.'

            "That was probably the first sign where I thought, 'Okay, maybe I can do this.'''

            By the second year, AJ was running the majority of the drills for the running backs "and he really let me coach those guys a lot."

            After Rice beat Marshall, 41-24, to win the school's first Conference USA championship, Reagan left to become the offensive coordinator at Kansas, with head coach David Bailiff giving Steward the reins of the running backs for a Liberty Bowl matchup against Dak Prescott and the Mississippi State Bulldogs. 

          Following the bowl game, Bailiff brought AJ in and told him, "Hey, we're going to promote you to the full-time job."
           
             "I'm not sure I would have stayed in college as a GA for a third season," AJ said. "I was willing to go get a high school job to coach my own room."

            A perfectionist at heart, AJ was blessed to work with coaches along the way that didn't micromanage him, and he was "forced to find resources and figure things out to be the type of coach I want to be," he said. 

            "I'm not okay with just getting a check and going home," he said. "I want my guys to be prepared. When I cut the film on, I want to say, 'This is the standard of how guys should play that position.' So, just reaching out to people who know a lot more than I do, or being in situations where I don't bang my head on the wall. I just need to say, I need to get better at this."

            When Bailiff's staff was let go at the end of the 2017 season, AJ watched as each of the assistants walked by his office at the end of hallway with their boxes. Each one saying the same thing: "Hey, man, I love you. Stay in touch. They let me go."

            "That was my first experience going through any of that," Steward said. "I had to watch all these guys that I looked up to my whole career, and I've never seen them demoralized like this. And now, I've got to sit down and basically get told, 'You're fired.'''

            While he was actually never formally let go, AJ was told that it would be in his best interest to reach out to people in the profession just in case the new staff decided to go in a different direction.

            After going to the coaches' convention and putting the word out, he "got no bites, nothing really worked out for me." But late one night, AJ got a random Twitter follow from then-BYU offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes.

            "I had never been to the state of Utah in my life, barely even knew anything about BYU," he said. "I don't even know if they have a job, but I hit follow. And I think he messaged me that night, 'Hey, we're looking for a running backs coach. We heard you may be looking?' That's how I got to BYU. It's just all God."

            Despite AJ getting involved in the process late and having no prior relationship with Grimes or BYU head coach Kalani Sitake, "once he came in and interviewed, Kalani and I were both sold on him," Grimes said. 
"I was just really impressed. And then, honestly, I just became good friends with him, and he and I have stayed in touch."

            In his two seasons at BYU with Grimes as the OC, Steward said he got confirmation that what he had been doing as a running backs coach was "not too far off the boat on this."

            "(Grimes) really helped me bring it all together," AJ said. "I learned a lot of things from him and started this maturation and this next phase of my career where I became, at least in my mind, more of a veteran, confident coach."

            Moving to the Power 5 ranks, Steward spent the COVID-affected 2020 season at Arizona and then two years at Oregon State, helping the Beavers to their third 10-win season in program history (10-3) and a 30-3 win over Florida in the Las Vegas Bowl. Running back Damien Martinez rushed for 982 yards (6.1 ypc) and seven touchdowns, earning first-team all-conference and Freshman All-America honors. 

            At OSU, offensive line coach Jim Michalczik was "one of the biggest blessings for my career, just who he is as a man," AJ said. 

            "When I get to that stage in my career, I want to pour back into the younger coaches like he did with me," he said. "It's not just becoming a better coach for your players, it's becoming a better person as a coach."

            After turning down a couple other job offers after the 2022 season, AJ thought God might be telling him to "stay put" at Oregon State, but when Grimes called about the Baylor opening, "I just felt a real sense of peace with the situation."

            "I felt like it was confirmation that you're not just chasing the coaching stuff, that there's substance to it," he said. "I felt like I graduated to the next step where God is like, 'Okay, I'm going to give you a little more comfort (being closer to family), but you're going to be uncomfortable in other ways.' It was just an emotional feeling that you've accomplished something, but you're also leaving something that meant a lot to you."

            Steward inherits a talented running backs room at Baylor that includes Richard Reese, a Freshman All-American and Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year; Oklahoma State transfer Dominic Richardson; experienced veterans in Taye McWilliams and Qualan Jones; and incoming freshman Bryson Washington, who won back-to-back state championships at Franklin. 

            "I think our job as coaches is the same thing we're asking of Bryson Washington when he gets here as a freshman or Dominic Richardson just getting here," Steward said. "We have expectations of them to be a better version of themselves at the end of spring ball, at the end of camp and after one season, after their senior season. 

            "That's our job as coaches, too, is just an endless almost journey of expansion. The longer you go, the closer you are to your ceiling of knowledge, but also ways to do it and unlearning certain things. And that's how we should be in life in general. I try to do that in my faith, as a husband, as a father. It's a constant state of, 'How can I do this a little bit better?'''

            Grimes said Steward coaches running backs like an offensive line coach would coach his linemen or "the way that I coach our tight ends."

            "Just a great attention to detail, demanding about the little things, very precise in his techniques," Grimes said. "And that's not always the case at the skill positions, especially running back. Some guys are more of the mindset of 'Hey, these guys have been doing this since they were 3 years old, just give them the ball and let their natural ability take over.' And he's not that way."

            AJ and his wife, Virginia, were married in 2015 and have two boys, AJ (4) and Jaxon (1).

          "Coach Bailiff at Rice used to say, 'Don't ever say anything to a player that you wouldn't say to your own kid,''' he said. "That set a standard for me early in my career, before I had kids. It just hits harder when you actually have your own kids. I just feel like I coach these guys so much better now, having that phrase ingrained in me."