CougarPeasant wrote:
BYUtx wrote:
How about not recruiting enough linemen because he had won w/o linemen before? The only thing GC proved in 01 is that if he had enough great offensive players, he could barely get by as a HC who didn't care about defense. To Crowton (from my perspective) it seemed that defense was just some trivial detail that got in the way of more important matters.
I don't know if you remember, but a condition of Crowton becoming head coach at BYU was that he keep all the staff. So he had to keep Ken Schmidt to run the defense the first year. That defense put 4 players in the NFL in spite of how bad it played. Crowton also hired Mendenhall and the defense turned it around the next season. Unfortunately, the cupboard was bare for Crowton on offense after that.
Don't get me wrong, I am glad we have Mendenhall and Crowton is gone, but don't lay all the blame on Crowton for things that were out of his control. He did make OSU's defense look silly in the BCS title game this year. He knows how to coach, just not be a head coach.
He knows talent too. The issue is how to get that talent to either perform (he managed to do so in 2001) or stay out of trouble. We'll never know how that crop of players would have done had they stayed away from innapropriate things and of course, the wrong girls. (Kobe Bryant anyone?)
He might have inherited an experienced team when he took over (Doman, Staley, etc.) but the cupboard was really bare behind them. I'm related to Lavell but i still have to admit that after the Luke Staley class, we had a run of some real stinker classes (stinker due to their production when they got here, not the national rankings when they signed) and (I mention this in another post) a lot of wasted scholarships on guys that never contributed.
What Bronco has managed to do, is to right the ship and avoid the type of waste that had occurred for the last ten years at the Y. Scholarships aren't wasted with Bronco (in fact guys without scholarships are even contributing big time); and we have depth for the 1st time in recent memory.
(Draw up a depth chart for the next 5-8 years and you'll pinch yourself how well Bronco and his staff have done)
literally you can pencil guys in for a long time from now that we know are going to star. (Adam Timo, Bronson Kaufusi, Craig Bills, etc. etc. etc. I fully expect Jake Heaps to be the next superstar BYU QB too)
