Is macOS known to completely crash due to a bad boot drive?
It's not really clear what you mean by completely crash or crash the whole OS, but yes a bad hard drive can cause a crash/freeze.

In your case there's a few things you can still try:


Try a new cable
Reset the NVRAM
Try booting into Safe Mode


Obviously I don't need to explain how to try a new cable, so I've included steps below for resting the NVRAM and booting into Safe Mode.

Resetting the NVRAM

Follow these steps:


Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again (i.e. a 2nd time) and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.


Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:


Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down 
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. could you boot your Mac okay, does it still crash?)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Test your Mac again to see if it still crashes


Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

If by any chance you find your Mac doesn't crash while in Safe Mode, but it does crash when booted normally again, then we know the problem is basically software related and we can troubleshoot that further.