I never understood the hate for Crouch, he carried that team even more than suh carried us last year. It's not his fault we got blown out against Colorado, and Miami was simply the better team...
He was the team that year. The problem was he also was the reason Nebraska is in the fix that their in now with this offense though some of the blame could be contributed to Solich relying to much on one player.
Lord tried to do the same and wasn't good enough, but the lack of any rb and fb production didn't help either.
Always found it strange that it was the defense that was the problem in 2001,but everyone couldn't wait to get rid of an offense that took Nebraska to 5 NC game and a possible 6 in 1999. In another words they kept the bad defense and dropped the offense.
I don't see how you blame Crouch or the Crouch situation for an offense 8-9 years later. Solich was fired for whatever reason Pederson had in mind, but I don't think that reason was a too QB centric offense. It may well have been the result of that offense. Just because Crouch was a very capable one-man gang doesn't mean that Solich had to stay with that kind of offense after he left. Callahan came in and was going to put in his offense, no matter if the QB is dominant or is mainly pitching to an I-back. It's evolved somewhat with Watson but that's even farther removed from the effect of Crouch.
Suppose Crouch never came back from Omaha early in his redshirt freshman year. That means Newcombe stays at QB, and after his injury I don't think he was going to have the kind of success Crouch did. We might do worse and Solich loses his job earlier, and we still change offenses. At best case, we still make it to the Orange Bowl after the 2001 season and lose to a great Miami team. Then Lord takes over, and we probably have the same 2002-2003.
I don't have much respect for Crouch quitting the NFL like he did, but he put those Husker teams on his back and took good teams a lot farther than they should've gone, IMO.