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Gary Crowton

by UVACoug · 11/12/2009

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UVACoug
Here's a cool article about Gary Crowton and his mission from a LA newspaper:



http://www.lsureveille.com/sports/football-lsu-offensive-coordinator-gary-crowton-s-mormon-mission-shapes-his-life-1.2029820



Unfortunately it looks like LSU fans are beginning to recognize his talent for producing high powered offenses in year one and then completely falling apart two years later:



http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/messagetopic.asp?p=15726047



However, it looks like he may find another job and avoid getting fired again. Memphis may be considering him for their vacant head coaching position:



http://coacheshotseat.com/coacheshotseatblog/?p=1447
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Cougy_Monster
Crowton is an enigma.



Is there anybody that has coached a #1 offense in the country on so many different teams? He's obviously brilliant. I don't care what anybody says; you can't luck your way in to those kind of record-book offenses.



But, his teams inevitably become inconsistent for some reason.



If I were a head coach in the hot seat I'd pay big money to have Crowton come in for 2 years as my OC to make me look awesome and then jump ship while on top of the world.
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Cougy_Monster
And while we're on the topic (sort of):



2001 was one of my favorite seasons in a couple decades of watching Cougar Football. Every game was exciting and the play calling was ridiculously creative.



I've always felt that Crowton took a slowly dying Cougar football team and performed beautiful CPR in 2001, giving the team enough life to pull out 12 miracles in a row....but CPR can only keep blood flowing for so long and thus we had to endure the debacle of 2002-2004.
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BroncoBot
Cougy_Monster wrote:
And while we're on the topic (sort of):



2001 was one of my favorite seasons in a couple decades of watching Cougar Football. Every game was exciting and the play calling was ridiculously creative.



I've always felt that Crowton took a slowly dying Cougar football team and performed beautiful CPR in 2001, giving the team enough life to pull out 12 miracles in a row....but CPR can only keep blood flowing for so long and thus we had to endure the debacle of 2002-2004.


Could be the best description I've ever read of those years.
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Schmoe
So you're saying Crowton is a darn good EMT, he's just not a doctor?
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Cougy_Monster
Schmoe wrote:
So you're saying Crowton is a darn good EMT, he's just not a doctor?


Whatever he is, on any given year (if he's relatively new to his team) he is capable of coaching the best, most exciting offense in the country. I've never seen another coach able to be so consistent at creating #1 offenses and yet so inconsistent after that.



I'd say he's a brilliant doc, just a specialist -- not involved much in continuity of care.
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SpiffCoug
Whatever magic Crowton used to resusitate a dying program in 2001 died when Luke Staley broke his leg against Mississippi St. That was the single most important play in Crowton's career. He never recovered from that moment.



Two things I believe about the Crowton era:

1) If Staley doesn't break his leg, BYU doesn't lose their last two games. Yes we lost to Hawaii by 27, but you can't tell me Staley, who had scored 28 times in 10 games, wasn't worth 28 points in that game. That Staley who hadn't lost a fumble all year wouldn't have prevented at least four of the six lost fumbles in that game.



2) If Norm Chow hadn't burned Brandon Doman's redshirt for 11 plays at WR in 1999, Doman would have been in the QB in 2002. This would have allowed Matt Berry to not have to play immediately after returning from a mission. This could have also led to John Beck being able to redshirt in 2003. Chow's decision in 1999, hurt BYU's quarterback play all the way until 2005.
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imuakahuku
I think the problem is that he comes in and radically changes the offense and the other teams are not able to adapt. But in year two they are either ready or he thinks they are so he starts making ridiculous play calls that just kill the offense. Like calling plays that they may have only practiced a few times back in spring or fall ball. I think he would be very successful if he would trust himself and his players to execute at a high enough level that the play doesn't have to completely fool the defense. In the end it seems he calls go deep plays every other play. Not hard to beat teams that throw deep (25+ yards downfield) more often than they throw short (10 yards or less).
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EM_Puma
Maybe it's as simple as by year three his regular conference opponents have figured out his tendencies and they know how to defense his play calling.



I wish him well. He's a good man and he did BYU a service when he came in the first place. I don't think he had what it takes administratively to handle all the issues at BYU, but he might do fine in another environment and I'd like to see him at Memphis (there's less of a chance of drawing a LDS athlete that BYU wants to Memphis than there ever would be at LSU).
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Cougy_Monster
EM_Puma wrote:
Maybe it's as simple as by year three his regular conference opponents have figured out his tendencies and they know how to defense his play calling.


I've thought about that a lot, and I know most people would agree with your statement (including myself in part). But, what I don't understand is how can a defensive coordinator ever figure out Crowton's tendencies when he is possibly the most unpredictable playcaller in all of college football? For better or for worse you'd never know on 4th and 2 from our own 40 if he was going to punt, run the option or go for the end zone. You never knew if in the 1st quarter he'd be pulling out an onside kick (possibly my favorite call ever against Air Force). You always new that the 3rd quarter would start with a new offensive game plan that he concocted at half time (Anae NEEDS to learn that lesson or we'll never come back from a 1st half deficit). I loved that. It was like you had 60,000 fans watching a flag football game in my backyard with plays drawn in the dirt.



I wonder if Crowton's 3rd year woes might come from a certain amount of that same unpredictability in practice. The freshman and sophomores probably need consistency in playcalling and execution before being exposed to the wild world of Crowton creativity. When Crowton steps into a team of upper classmen who had been coached already in consistent execution he can then take that near-finished product and team cohesiveness and unleash the bizzare power of Crowton creativity on the opponent with near perfection. But, when the newbies move up the depth chart they play as unpredictably as the playcalling and the result has been badness.



Maybe he'd do well in an environment that had a JV team under a different system so he could always take the skills of the mature / consistent players and blow up defenses every year.
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Guest
I think CougyMonster has nailed an interesting point. Everybody knows that Crowton goes into a situation and has a phenomenal first year, but then things start to fall off. How many of those situations has he gone into with upperclassmen at the skill positions? I believe that he's able to go in with developed players and get them to be very unconventional, but that he lacks an ability to develop younger players, so that when his upperclassmen have moved on, his new players don't have the grounding in fundamentals necessary to execute at a higher level.
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UVACoug
hawkwing wrote:
I think CougyMonster has nailed an interesting point. Everybody knows that Crowton goes into a situation and has a phenomenal first year, but then things start to fall off. How many of those situations has he gone into with upperclassmen at the skill positions? I believe that he's able to go in with developed players and get them to be very unconventional, but that he lacks an ability to develop younger players, so that when his upperclassmen have moved on, his new players don't have the grounding in fundamentals necessary to execute at a higher level.


Maybe he's more cut out for the NFL.
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ABYUFAN
UVACoug wrote:
I think CougyMonster has nailed an interesting point. Everybody knows that Crowton goes into a situation and has a phenomenal first year, but then things start to fall off. How many of those situations has he gone into with upperclassmen at the skill positions? I believe that he's able to go in with developed players and get them to be very unconventional, but that he lacks an ability to develop younger players, so that when his upperclassmen have moved on, his new players don't have the grounding in fundamentals necessary to execute at a higher level.


Maybe he's more cut out for the NFL.


Funny that you mention that because my recollection is that he did the same thing in the NFL...had an offense tear it up in year one, and tank over time. My recollection was that he was on the hot seat, and considered for firing by the Bears when he took the BYU job.
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UVACoug
ABYUFAN wrote:
hawkwing wrote:
I think CougyMonster has nailed an interesting point. Everybody knows that Crowton goes into a situation and has a phenomenal first year, but then things start to fall off. How many of those situations has he gone into with upperclassmen at the skill positions? I believe that he's able to go in with developed players and get them to be very unconventional, but that he lacks an ability to develop younger players, so that when his upperclassmen have moved on, his new players don't have the grounding in fundamentals necessary to execute at a higher level.


Maybe he's more cut out for the NFL.


Funny that you mention that because my recollection is that he did the same thing in the NFL...had an offense tear it up in year one, and tank over time. My recollection was that he was on the hot seat, and considered for firing by the Bears when he took the BYU job.


You're right. It looks like he had a pretty tough time with the Bears, but he did have a crappy QB. Here's a good overview of his career to this point:



http://picklewagon.com/2007/01/18/lsu-fans-will-suffer-because-of-gary-crowton/
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Cougy_Monster
Maybe Crowton is a great gameday coach and not a great practice coach. So, no matter the level of the players (freshmen in college or NFL veterans) they don't get great consistent fundamentals coaching and over time they become inconsistent on the field. No matter how good you are, if you don't keep up with effective practice techniques your skills will suffer. This deficit in practice would only be manifest after a couple years when either the newbies have moved up the depth charts or the vets have gotten rusty enough to underperform compared to previous levels.



Thus, he's able to come in and as stated before he can take a prepared team and go all Barnum and Bailey on the opponent until the consequences of his practice style catch up with the team.



Conversely, I believe that Anae is the polar opposite of Crowton. He is so consistent and teaches such phenomenal fundamentals and execution that our players who get raised in his system will be the epitome of execution as seniors (if that's not the epitome of hyperbole.....). However, he has demonstrated very little offensive creativity or in-game adjustments. I even wonder if the times when we've seen a wrinkle or 2 in the playcalling if Bronco hadn't lit a fire under Anae to make it happen.
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