Cougar14.2

Well, Crosby gets to 4-0 in district play in large part to being the benefactor of a weak district. Tough start to the season but have set ourselves up for a couple shots at hosting a home playoff game . . . or dare I even say a district championship.

I thought Crosby would finish 3rd or 4th before the season started and it looks like we’ll at least finish 3rd. It’s disappointing because this is the type team and schedule Riotdan or Prieto could’ve finished at 9-1 with an opportunity for at least a regional semi appearance. That being said, I think very few of us thought Crosby would be at this point in the season and still have the opportunity to host a home playoff game. The runner-up probably still gets a brutal bi-district matchup with Pf. Weiss but if it’s Crosby I still think we relish the opportunity coming off a 2-8 season last year.

It looks like that because we played better overall. He’s been moving some players around the last couple of weeks and actually trying to get some of his athletes the ball which is a lot more “offensive coordinating” than he’s been doing during his time in Crosby. We’ll take the progress where we can get it though. We’re 3-0 in district play because we have better football players than three teams we’ve played. Again, you take the progress from the beginning of the year where we were losing to a team like Dayton who has half the talent we do. The issue is being consistently blown out by teams with equal or slightly better talent. Crosby is benefitting record-wise from a weak district but it’s helping us learn to win again. Thursday was the most swagger I’ve seen a Crosby team play with since Willis has been our coach. Wins are wins but if you’re objectively looking at what Crosby is considering progress after a year and a half under Willis it’s a game where we play two good quarters and then get shut out until late in the fourth quarter against a team with not near the personnel of La Porte or Angleton. Crosby could be a lot better than we are but I will admit this is the best we’ve looked under Willis. I guess it’s just going to take the kids overplaying his system and play-calling to achieve the results the last two coaches did?

Can’t believe y’all only scored 25 points on Friendswood. Was expecting a blowout. We aren’t very good and still won by 14

Little disappointing to give up that last TD. Feels like when need at least 21 more to be comfortable now. Still like how the defense is playing though, hopefully we’ll adjust out of that zone we haven’t been able to play all year.

Not sure, but I know that’s two weeks in a row the defense has scored a TD.

Lott Robinson. The sophomore who came back from BH, unfortunately he’s getting all the reps because the other QB got hurt last week. Hopefully Willis is taking notes though.

Willis isn’t switching the QB and the offense looks a hail of a lot different. *Well, it’s because the other QB is on the sideline in a knee brace? Smh

Being able to get to 3-0 in district play would be huge for Crosby tonight. After beating Friendswood I feel more comfortable in penciling in wins against FB Kempner and Porter. That means we would get two chances the last three weeks of the season to play for second place, host a first round playoff game and avoid a first round matchup with College Station.

Very critical win for Crosby last night. At no point has the current regime given me any reason to think Crosby should be able to pencil in wins but for the sake of discussion I will for FB Kempner who we play two weeks from now and also Porter who we play a couple of weeks after that. That means if Crosby can beat Kingwood Park next week we’ll most likely finish district play 5-2 and in at least 3rd place. That being, the team could be a lot better if we had a competent offensive coach. Crosby’s offensive philosophy is to give it to Yarbrough and hope he breaks it which is why we lose to team with above average defensive talent. Crosby’s TE Landen Hammer is 6’2” and about 210lbs with crazy ball skills, an absolute mismatch problem and got one target last night. Friendswood realized Crosby had some playmakers on the edges and lots of times gave the receivers a 10 yard cushion. The problem is that Willis doesn’t know that so not once did we just raise up, throw it out to the receiver and give them an opportunity to be an athlete and make a play. So now that we’ve averaged 8 completions per game through our first four contest because 50% of the time Willis chooses to swap out 50% of the offense we look like we “don’t have the receiving talent that we used to.” Yarbrough probably had close to 300 rushing yards last night but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had 35 carries. I like our backup RB but there are several kids who could help Crosby more at that position and Willis chooses not to play them there and feed Yarbrough to the point he couldn’t even finish the game last night. He continues to display an inability to efficiently use his personnel which is why we get blow out by any team with at least equal talent. Maybe something changes but Willis being 6-19 his last two and a half years on the sideline and his inability to shake the Cedar Park model don’t give much hope, which is unfortunate for the kids.

What position is the talent missing from? I know you don’t know much about Crosby football so you’ll be shocked to learn that we didn’t have a single senior FBS signee off any of the regional finals, semi-finals or state final team. All the years of Walter, Singleton, Sqwirl, Patterson, etc. were first and second round losses. Off the state final team Branch was an FCS signee, everybody else went juco including Dunn. Outside of 2013 with the Twins and Singleton Crosby has never had three FBS signees in one class like they do now. That’s not even including kids like AJ Johnson, Malik Windfont and Josiah Jones who have/will have multiple offers to continue their careers at the D2 level or higher. We’re just a mediocre to poorly coached football team so the looks are deceiving. Real Crosby fans remember what we looked like under Kevin Flanagan. He was at Crosby for seven years and made the playoffs the last six seasons before he was fired because we finally got a supt. who understood what he was looking at. Crosby would get blown out in non-district games and then finish 3rd or 4th in district and then get blow out in the first or second round and it was because “Crosby just doesn’t have the talent.” All those years backing into the playoffs and Crosby’s community giving him kids like Dominic Merka and Chance Casey kept him viable. Now we’re in the same situation because of how bad the district is. There’s a good chance we finish in 3rd place which will mean a ride to College Station and a likely 4+ score blowout and first round exit. Willis will then sell that as improvement from the even worse coaching job he did last season. In actuality if he misses the playoffs it will be the first time Crosby has done so in back to back seasons in 20 years, meaning that even when we’re not good we still have enough “talent” to make the playoffs in any district we’re assigned. Any kid that’s ever been “recruited” at Crosby parents are from/live in Barrett Station from the C.E. King kids in the ‘14 class all the way Ayden Jones from Summer Creek in the ‘23 class.

Better hurry up and get to Walmart before we run out of Kleenex

If that’s what you think then you don’t know much about football or you don’t know much about Crosby’s football program. Must be one of the new ones

Have you seen the trash we’ve been under him his first year and a half? He’s 5-19 his last 2.5 year in the sideline.

Yeah, with good coaching we are. Instead we look slow and unathletic with our deficiencies always able to be exposed because of his play calling. These are blowout games under Riordan and Prieto

At some point you have to start to think Willis has money on the game?

It doesn’t, Willis is just an idiot. Game should be a blowout

Three opportunities to turn it into the two score game and we come away with 0 points. Two in the high red zone and one 1st and 10 from the 11 yard line. Luckily Friendswood is big and soft so we’re able to be competitive with very mediocre play.

Well, luckily this is the worst futbol team Crosby has played since those New Caney teams of the early 2010’s. We’ll see what happens next week when we play kids who are willing to tackle and bigger than our freshman squad. That being said, Crosby at least gets to start 1-0 in district play.

Really disappointing tonight. Can’t help but to think this is probably a game Crosby could’ve won 35-17 with decent coaching. Just bad offensive play calling with a poor approach to personnel usage. Through three games against 5A-D2 teams Crosby is 0-3 and averaging 9.3ppg. Sucks for the kids and fans having to endure this because of our administration.

You would hope but I'm not really sure? I think both of his kid are juniors and he's from somewhere not too far from Crosby so taking this job was coming back closer to home for him. On the business side of it he may have more time left on his contact so if he doesn't retire Crosby's only option may be to reassign him? With him being reassigned and Crosby most likely having to retain the bulk of his assistants until he's fully out, I'm not sure the job would be as attractive as it normally is. Just a continuing domino effect of poor administrative management of the athletic department.

Crosby’s superintendent hiring Joe Willis is the problem. I was vehemently against it when we hired him because his approach to the game does not fit the personnel the Crosby community produces. There are a lot of people on this site who had no idea what they were talking about trying to correct me on that. If you get your butt kicked with multiple SEC kids on the roster then you have no shot with just BigXII and C-USA kids which he’s proven to be true. He runs a system that nullifies any athletic advantages we have at the skill positions. Instead he still takes the Cedar Park approach which relied heavily on being dominant at the line of scrimmage. That’s fine when you average 6’3” and 285lbs across the offensive line the way they did when Crosby played them in the semifinals, we don’t have that and never have. His system requires the kids to process a lot of information, especially on defense. This makes the kids play extremely slow and makes us look like “we don’t have the athletes we used to”. Willis calls plays and is terrible at it. With the system being bad I’m not sure it makes a lot of difference what he calls though? One example from last week is running the ball multiple times on 3rd and long yet choosing to call a pass play on 4th and inches which resulted in a goal line interception. He relies extremely heavily on his RB and now that Fontenot isn’t there to substitute in when we need a 3rd and short conversion his play calling looks even worse. I bet we already have close to 15 three and outs through the first two games. Practice is slow and boring and he doesn’t inject any excitement into the kids because he’s pretty low energy himself. As far as the staff my opinion is that there are only two real “football guys” on the sideline besides Willis. I think most of the guys he hired need a lot more seasoning. It’s just all around bad now, hopefully the superintendent makes a change after this year but her ego is so big that I’m not sure she will be willing to admit failure. Crosby's district isn’t very good so we might finish in 4th place at which time she may try to sell “improvement” to the interested parties and allow Willis to screw over another year of Crosby’s talent. Crosby may be 6A after next year, we need to get someone in here who has the ability to connect with our kids and the willingness to build a program.

You can sort of make that argument for Riordan leaving but I personally think it was something else, it just happened to coincide with the financial mismanagement timeframe. The superintendent and her ego ran off Prieto though. Prieto asked for things to improve the program and she balked at it, ego tripped and Coach P was gone. Then the genius hired Willis and gave him most of the stuff Prieto was asking for, smh. While we’re still not where we need to be, we wouldn’t be paying Willis the 6th highest salary in the Houston area if we were hurting.

I think whoever wins FBM’s district will play PNG is the title game. Right now I still think FBM probably win it. Their QB play is usually mediocre most of the time but this year I think they have “good mediocre” QB play. I like Randle because of that sick RB but FBM has like 7 D1 kids on defense so I for now I lean them. I think schools like Anna and Melissa are a lot better matchup for PNG personnel wise, they’re line of scrimmage teams and PNG excels there in 5A-D2. Maybe they struggle with Lovejoy’s passing game but them being a defensive team now I would still lean PNG. SOC would be the most obvious out for them but them only mustering 12 points this year kind of makes me wonder how good their offense really is since they can’t hand it to Green anymore? We’ll see this week against Longview though, kind of tough to judge them off of games with the two best teams in the state. Right now I got PNG’s defense though.

Man, imagine what all these people are about to witness on homecoming Friday night? We’re probably talking about some 52-7 type action. The 6th highest paid coach in the Houston area will be 2-11 heading into district play. I hate it for the kids but glad all the administrators will be there to watch it.