He sounds bitter.
http://www.tidesports.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040918/NEWS/40918002/1067*
CECIL HURT: Leaving Croyle in a bad call -- and a costly one* September 18, 2004
<JavaScript: newWindow = openWin( '/apps/pbcs.dll/art_tips?Date=20040918&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=40918002&SiteData=TL&Profile=1067&SectionCat=', 'SendToFriend', 'width=400,height=450,toolbar=0,location=0,directories=0,status=0,menuBar=0,scrollBars=1,resizable=0' ); newWindow.focus()> There was one player that this University of Alabama football team could not afford to lose, and it has lost him for this season.
I’m well aware that football is a team sport. I’m well aware that injuries are a part of a tough, full-speed, full-contact endeavor. I’m well aware that no coach has a direct psychic hotline to the future. About the only thing of which I am not aware is what exactly Brodie Croyle was doing on the field in the second half of a foregone conclusion against Western Carolina.
Yes, Mike Shula’s job is to win football games. But Saturday night’s football game was clearly won at halftime. The only mystery left was whether Western Carolina would score at all. At that point, Alabama already had 31 points. It could have put any player on the team in for Croyle - not just Marc Guillon, the backup quarterback, but any player on the roster - and Western Carolina could not have won the game.
So what exactly was Croyle doing on the field? Sharpening his passing skills? Putting on an exhibition for Arkansas scouts?
There is conventional wisdom that says you put the starting quarterback on the field for first series of the second half. There is also a time when clear thinking should preclude reliance on conventional wisdom. There was a message being sent to Alabama’s coaches when Western Carolina gave up 17 points in the final three minutes of the first half. The message was that Alabama had scored enough, and could safely put Croyle on the sidelines.
The Tide had already seen its leading rusher, Ray Hudson, knocked out of the game by a concussion. That happened early enough that it was just one of the breaks. Had Croyle been injured early in the second quarter, instead of early in the third, you could say the same thing. But for Croyle to be in the game, and in harm’s way, with the issue settled so decisively, was a decision that will haunt Alabama for the rest of the year.
Shula fell back on that so-called conventional wisdom in explaining his rationale for putting Croyle in the game in the second half.
“We were going to try to get one more score,” Shula said. “We have so many young players, we were going to try and get everybody else into the football game. But we made the decision at halftime to put him back in for that one drive.”
Croyle, who manfully faced the media after the game despite his torn knee ligament, also defended the decision.
“This has nothing to do with the coaches taking me out,” Croyle said. “We had put up some points, but we hadn’t looked good. You can’t play scared. The first group needed some more work.”
Shula had been criticized, mildly, for leaving Croyle in to the end, or nearly the end, of the Tide’s first two easy wins (as well as for his use of an injured Croyle in last year’s lost-cause Georgia game). The rationale was that Shula had an NFL mentality, one that suggests that the starting quarterback plays as long as the opponent has a breath of life.
That’s fine, except for a couple of things. One, Croyle doesn’t play like an NFL quarterback. He rarely throws the ball away, or slides to avoid a hit. He tries to make things happen, regardless of the score, which is commendable. Two, the NFL has no Division 1-AA. Opponents in that league can make amazing comebacks. Western Carolina can’t.
It’s Shula’s team to run, and ultimately, his decision. No one feels worse about Croyle’s injury than Shula, who said he felt “a hole in his stomach” when he heard the season-is-over verdict on his starting quarterback.
Just as no one could have foreseen what happened to Croyle, no one can say definitively how Alabama will respond with Marc Guillon and Spencer Pennington at quarterback. The offense will certainly be different. The running backs won’t be able to run so freely without the threat of Croyle stretching the field. The receivers will have to work harder. If the production is lessened, then that, in turn, puts more pressure on the defense. If that sounds like too much value to place on one player, even a quarterback, just look at the difference in Ole Miss from last year to this.
Amazing things do happen, once in a blue moon. Sometimes, Gary Hollingsworth is just waiting in the wings to take over for an injured Jeff Dunn. But a realistic look at things suggests that if Alabama can somehow find three more wins on its schedule and qualify for a bowl game, that will be quite an achievement, if not an overachievement. The 3-0 start, for better or worse, is now only a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been.
It would diminish what has happened in this state this week to call what happened to Croyle “a disaster.” Hurricane Ivan was a disaster. This is a huge personal disappointment for Croyle, and a challenge for a football team that really didn’t need any more challenges besides NCAA sanctions.
On the other hand, Hurricane Ivan was not preventable. The debate about whether Croyle’s injury might have been will rage for some time - and some people will always feel that it was.
Cecil Hurt is sports editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 205-722-0225.
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