Mike Leach: “Michael Crabtree is not a Diva”
September 18, 2009 – 8:50 am by Jimmy Shapiro
SRI continues to work in new writers. This post is courtesy of Chris Fedor of WKNR in Cleveland. A season ago, Texas Tech surprised everyone in college football. In fact, at one point, they were one of the best teams in the country after their win against Texas before stumbling a little bit down the stretch. This is 2009 and it’s a new season; Graham Harrell is no longer the quarterback for the Red Raiders and Michael Crabtree is in the NFL, well kind of anyway as he continues his holdout. However, one thing remains a constant as long as Mike Leach is the Head Coach, Texas Tech will be one of the top offenses in the country and so far this season, the Red Raiders are just that. Taylor Potts has taken over the reigns at quarterback and has huge numbers and Detron Lewis looks like the go-to receiver that has replaced Crabtree.
Texas Tech will face their stiffest test of the year this weekend in Austin. A season ago in Lubbock the Red Raiders walked away with a win and Michael Crabtree’s touchdown at the end of the game extinguished the Longhorns’ National Championship hopes. It’s certainly something that the Texas players and Longhorns fans will have in their head as they go into this showdown Saturday night in Austin.
Mike Leach joined The Dan Patrick Show to talk about playing against Colt McCoy this weekend, having to replace the dynamic duo of Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree and Crabtree’s holdout.
On what stands out about Colt McCoy:
“Just good overall play. He throws it well and he runs well. I think he’s a good passer and a good leader of the unit. He’s typically not designed to run. It’s usually a broken play or something if he takes off. He’d rather not run.”
On what he’s trying to do against Colt McCoy:
“Well we just want to play whatever they run, we want to play it well and occasionally they will turn him loose. The biggest thing that he does, like what any good quarterback does, he leads his unit well. He does a great job of leading his unit.”
On whether he thinks he has replaced Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree:
“Well, we’ll see. I think so, but I think all teams at this point are kind of emerging and we’re no exception. Teams get way better the first three weeks of the season and at some point they plateau depending on how old they are. Lazy teams will plateau sooner, teams that have more experience will plateau sooner because there’s not as much upside with them and then I think they will get a little bit better, but not leaps and bounds like they do the first three weeks. Like all teams we’re emerging I’d say.”
On whether or not Michael Crabtree is a diva:
“Well, you’d have to know him to understand. He’s not a diva. He’s a guy that kind of goes and does his stuff alone and I’m sure he’s got all the people advising him saying ‘do this, do this’ and Michael goes about his business. You wonder if maybe he shouldn’t take a more assertive part in this. I deliberately haven’t gotten involved. If he had followed my advice he’d still be at Texas Tech. No, he’s more of a loner than a diva. People that follow him around are doing just that, they are following him around. (Host: Well is that the problem though? He’s listening to other people here instead of saying ‘let me talk face to face with the 49ers?’) Well there’s not a lot of guys talking face to face with the team they play for nowadays. You can make the argument that the people advising him are not giving him good advice, but it’d be pretty difficult to make the argument that Michael Crabtree shouldn’t have advisors, everybody else does. He would be relatively unprotected if he didn’t.”
On what advice he would give to Michael Crabtree:
“I would have to look at the facts a little more closely. I would do this though; I would make sure that there’s not too many cooks in the kitchen and I mean on either side. If you’re dealing with five people from the 49ers, you need to narrow that down to one and it needs to be a decision-maker. If you’re dealing with five people on Crabtree’s side, you need to narrow that down to one, two at the most, Michael and whoever is going to be the shot caller over there. My suspicion is that there are too many people involved perhaps on both sides.”
Listen to Mike Leach on the Dan Patrick Show
Tags: Big 12 football, Michael Crabtree, Mike Leach, Texas Tech Red Raiders, Texas Tech vs. Texas
