That's what his Tiger players call him. Just before the game started, Tom Brenneman asked Charles Davis what he thought was the most interesting matchup. He said OSU's #1 defense against LSU's offense. He said OSU's defense would have a tough ask ahead. He also said that if someone who had never seen football before and watched this game, that LSU's offense would astound and confound them. OSU, which had seen a little bit of football before, were surely astounded and confounded on Monday night. Thank you Les Miles for bringing this genius to LSU.
Crowton is awesome. I was very pleased when Miles got him to come to LSU. Unfortunately, I didn't see Crowton get the respect from the media or from Tiger Nation that he deserved this year. So it was nice seeing the announcers drool over Crowton while calling the game on Monday.
Almost 40 points a game. Well over 500 points for the season after losing 3 first round OFFENSIVE starters, including a quarterback and 2 wide recievers. A first year sytem based around Flynn who had seen limited action, who by the way played injured for the majority of the season. Oh and let's not forget that Doucet, arguably LSU's best player was injured. Did I also mention that we won our conference championship with a back-up QB and had a white dude running the ball all season. The scary thing is that we could possibly be better next year. Can we get a wizard icon?
The only big mistake I can remember Crowton making is not playing Scott when he ran all over Kentucky in the 1st half. Besides that he did very well considering we had to play some of our toughest games without our #1 WR and he also did an alright job splitting time between 5 players running the ball, that can be a very tough thing to do... there were some drives, off the top of my head the first drive against Ole Miss, where the offense just looked like a thing of beauty with everyone touching the ball. The only other thing I can criticize him for is not using Perrilloux more in some games where Flynn was hurt and clearly struggling. But all in all, definitely did a great job in the NC and I'm looking forward to the Wizard calling plays with all the talent we have. Edit: Here's the drive I was talking about (the first LSU one): http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/playbyplay?gameId=273210145
Yep I remember just beaming from ear to ear after that first LSU drive vs Ole Miss. It was probably my favorite drive of the season. Also loved all the CBS broadcasts when Danielson would show a list of all our running backs (including Holliday) and he showed how Crowton categorized each and how they were being used. He simply puts players in positions in which they have their best chance to succeed on the field. That's all you can ask of a coordinator.
It's pretty astounding even for those of us who have watched LSU's offense over the years, wouldn't you say? I bet Fisher would have stayed with his comfort zone and same old vanilla, vanilla that he'd used throughout the season. Even Miles, "The Gambler", said he was a bit concerned that they may have tried to put in too much but went with it cause he trusted his coach/players to execute and, as we saw, they did.
And this is the difference between a Les Miles and, say, Jerry DiNardo. No disrespect to Miles, but my guess is that DiNardo is as good a "coach" as is Miles... knows his Xs and Os, etc. The main difference that I see between miles and so many other head coaches is that (1) he is an excellent judge of coaching talent, (2) is very good at getting the good coaches to work on his staff and (3) especially for his coordinators, gives them a wide degree of latitude to do their job, even if he is not completely convinced its the right thing. I don't think its any coincidence that Dinardo was successful his first three seasons and then, once he ran off his two coordinators, started a very rapid downward spiral. I don't know enough about this sort of thing to judge his selection of position coaches, but he certainly knows how to pick coordinators... which would lead me to believe that he also knows how to pick, and retain, line coaches as well, who are responsible not only for teaching but also recruiting.
What worries me about all that is at some point as long as he stays successful someones gonna throw a bunch of $$$ at his feet and abra ka dabra....wizards gone!
