I'm not sure how Les Miles plans on delegating the offense. Whether he turns it completely over to Crowton or not. But watching his offense while he was Louisiana Tech I can tell you this. It won't take long to figure out if Crowton has full control of the offense or not.
The SEC is not like Louisiana Tech, or BYU for that matter. An SEC champion has to be able to run the ball as well as pass. Defenses are too good for a one-dimensional team to survive. The offensive coordinator is not just responsible for getting down the field quickly and scoring. At times he will be instructed by the head coach to control the ball with long rushing drives to eat up clock and keep the opponent's offense off the field. There is nothing as frustrating to a losing team as an opponent who is methodically moving the clock with lengthy scoring drives and they can't get back into the game to score the points they need and they can't get an interception either. An OC needs a reliable rushing game to do this. Jimbo always balanced the rush and the pass and I expect Crowton will too.
Reminds me of the South Carolina/ Auburn game. Can't remember the exact time the AU offense was allowed on the field in the second half but it was amazingly a fraction of the time. :thumb:
I've heard that Miles overruled Jimbo in the Auburn game & wanted to keep trying to run the ball. Not positive that it is true, but pretty sure. Miles said that we were very close to being able to run the ball successfully, but that it was just one or two guys that weren't doing their jobs. The TE (Dickson) was one & a Olineman was another, I believe. Had we actually been able to get the running game going, we would've won that game. Had we relied on passing for more of the game, we probably would've won that game (but I think this is less of a given - due in part to the way the calls were going particularly on passing plays). My biggest dissapointment in the coaches this season was not that they tried so hard to force the run in that game, but rather that they didn't recognize AU's weakness in the secondary. They couldn't match our depth, but we didn't expose that.
I wonder if they did try to expose their secondary's weakness; but ,as you said, the way the calls were going with the passing plays, it didn't quite work out. There was quite a bit of holding or interference on the receivers.....
Finally some hammers are meeting the nail here about Jimbo. Laying the Auburn loss on Jimbo is wrong. Its been widely suggested that Les Miles was calling the running game shots in that game and its been known for some time. Why Jimbo gets saddled with that loss for being "too conservative" is beyond me. I dont care about the bad calls in the Auburn game either. The fact of the matter is we couldnt freakin score or kick a long field goal. We should have been throwing the ball but instead Les went the run route. If you want to lay the offensive blame on anyone for that loss look right at our head coach.
How bout we just move on? That sounds like a good plan. :thumb: The fact is that no one including the players or coaches brought their A-game to Auburn that day. No reason to blame it one single person when we as fans dont know what went on there.
