Kirby Smart’s former Teammate Drew Cronic hired as Mercer’s newest head coach

Kirby Smart’s former Teammate Drew Cronic hired as Mercer’s newest head coach

Photo credit: https://mercerbears.com/

Cronic has been around Southern Conference football for a long time; a prerequisite for many of the coaches already in the league. Cronic served under Lamb while he was at Furman during Lamb’s tenure and he has also coached against Lamb while he himself coached at Furman. The experience is strong for Cronic and his knowledge of the game is even stronger. Cronic brings an extremely physical mindset combined with a winning culture to Mercer University. His experience and leadership will help Mercer get over the hump in an already established conference.

As the head coach of Lenoir-Rhine since 2018, Cronic helped the Lenoir Rhyne Bears to the program’s biggest turnaround in history. Cronic's 12 wins in 2018 represent the second-highest single-season total in program history and was also able to win a conference champion.

His forte is surely on the offensive side of the ball as he helped Furman lead in all major statistical categories during his time as offensive coordinator in 2017. His offense is a hybrid option offense that utilized creative blocking schemes from all positions and large chunk plays that typically come when the defense cannot stay disciplined. With Cronic coming into a conference whose teams are predominantly run first, he will fit right into the conference. The only difference is that the majority of the coaches in the conference will be used to a Bobby Lamb coached Mercer offense and Cronic will surely bring his own spin to the talent-filled Mercer.

Similarly to the previous staff, Cronic is academically centered and will surely continue to boast a team of well-prepared players not only on the field, but in the classroom as well. In the time that Cronic was the head coach of Lenoir- Rhyne, he went 28-11 and had a team GPA of a 3.0 in 2018.

As Mercer goes into a new era of their still-young program, it will be imperative for Cronic to bring a fresh outlook and a renewed excitement to the program. With the community surely behind the program, it will be interesting to see what will happen next for Mercer University.

-By: LeMarkus Bailey

Writer/Interviewer