The reason you brown the meat before you put it in the crock pot is to carmelize the outside and develop the delicious meat flavor. You could forgo that process and put it directly into the crock pot, but your missing out on some great flavor. You should in fact brown all sides of roasts before oven or cock pot cooking it for this very reason!! But yeah it doesn't simplify things does it? Also I love your face!!

Man I sound like such a know it all. I'm so sorry about that. Also I embarassingly(not a word??) spelled crock wrong