By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

For the second time since reinstatement, Mercer football will be led by a man from one of Georgia’s well-known football families.

And the new coach has plenty of experience with the former coach. Like, he used to work for him.

As expected, Drew Cronic was announced as the second head coach in Mercer’s modern football era, the school making it official around dinnertime Tuesday night.

It came three days after Cronic’s final game at Lenoir-Rhyne, in the quarterfinal round of the NCAA Division II playoffs, a close loss at home to West Florida.

“We had the opportunity to interview and vet some tremendous candidates,” Mercer athletics director Jim Cole said in the Tuesday evening release. “In that process, one candidate's passion, intensity and desire to win was evident from the start.

"Coach Drew Cronic brought that to the table. I cannot wait to see Drew implement his system and winning culture at Five Star Stadium.

Bobby Lamb was fired on Nov. 24, a day after the regular-season finale, a 56-7 loss at North Carolina. Lamb was considered to have started the season on a very hot seat and most likely needed to at least be in the FCS playoff hunt late in the season to keep his job, even after shaking up about half of the staff.

But the season never going in a good way, despite a 2-0 start that included an unscheduled game against Presbyterian that became a game when the Blue Hose had one canceled because of weather. Mercer had that Saturday off, so the two quickly decided to play.

Mercer then lost four straight games, two in Southern Conference play, beat a hot VMI team to sit at 3-4 overall and 2-2 in SoCon action only to go 1-4 down the stretch.

A 41-7 loss to No. 23 Wofford on senior day all but sealed Lamb’s fate.

“Mercer University is getting an outstanding football coach, but an even better person.”

— L-R president Fred Whitt

While that was going on, Lenior-Rhyne was rolling in South Atlantic Conference action, going 8-0 in league play, a second straight undefeated league season.

And on the day he got a new gig, Cronic was named the American Football Coaches Association regional coach of the year at his old gig after tying a program record with 13 wins, and breaking a home winning streak of 14 straight games that had survived since 1961.

Cronic defended the honor, winning it in his only two years at L-R, which followed two regional coach of the year selections while leading Reinhardt in the Mid-South Conference in NAIA play.

Two L-R Bears also earned CoSIDA academic All-America honors on Tuesday.

"I have been blessed to be the head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne the past two years," said Cronic in an L-R release. "These have been two of the best years of my life. I'm so proud of everyone associated with Lenoir-Rhyne Football, especially these young men who have done everything we asked them to do and brought so much joy and excitement to this university.”

Cronic’s resume, on and off the field, was hard to turn down by Lenoir-Rhyne two years ago.

"We hit a home run with the hiring of Drew Cronic as our head football coach," said LR President Fred Whitt in a Tuesday release. "Mercer University is getting an outstanding football coach, but an even better person. We will miss Drew, Amelia, Noah, Eli and Isiah and their extended family, and wish them nothing but the best. Not only will the Cronic name be a huge part of LR football history, they will always be valued members of our LR family."

Lenoir-Rhyne is located in Hickory, N.C., about 55 miles northwest of Charlotte and 300 miles from Macon.

It’s a private school with one campus, connected with the “North Carolina Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.” It has a traditional undergrad enrollment of about 1,800 students, a little more than half of Mercer’s main campus traditional undergrad enrollment.

The resume was hard for Mercer to ignore, as well.

Cronic leaves a team likely to keep on rolling. The depth chart for last Saturday’s game listed only seven seniors on offense and defense, and one on special teams. So Cronic went 13-1 with a team barely old enough to shave.

The Bears averaged 268.5 yards a game rushing while allowing a meager 81.9 yards on the ground in 2019. L-R was good for 157.6 yards passing, but surrendered 211.9.

The Cronic name is well known around state coaching circles.

His dad Danny has a career record of 222-114-1 in 30 years as a high school head coach, at Cherokee, LaGrange, Forsyth Central, East Coweta, and Heritage. He did most of his damage at East Coweta, going 148-60 with three region titles. He was 39-10 in four seasons at LaGrange with one region title and a loss in the GHSA Class 4A finals to Tift County. The fieldhouse at East Coweta is named after Danny.

Father and son were on the staff together when Reinhardt began football. The first planning year was 2011, and that initial staff included former Georgia players Quentin Moses and Tony Taylor, as well as Drew Cronic, a walk-on who got special teams action and lettered twice in the mid-1990s and was a teammate of the Bulldogs’ current boss.

Reinhardt visited Mercer in 2013 in the first game for both teams, Mercer pulling off a 40-37 win, thanks to a last-second 31-yard field goal by Josh Shutter with three seconds left. A year later, Mercer led 45-42 with 2:51 left only to watch Reinhardt drive down the field and miss a 41-yard field goal with, well, three seconds left.

Danny Cronic retired after spring practice in 2015 because of health issues, and Drew took over, aided, of course, by unofficial unpaid consultant Danny.

The Eagles went 22-3 and made two NAIA playoff appearances, reaching the quarterfinals in 2016.

Cronic moved back to the Southern Conference for his second stint at Furman, Lamb’s alma mater, as offensive coordinator in 2017. Furman beat visiting Mercer 28-21 that year made the FCS playoffs, finishing 8-5.

Lenoir-Rhyne was in need of a head coach to reverse a 6-15 two-year tide after the previous two head coaches went 45-14. The school called, Cronic listened, and two superb seasons followed.

Cronic runs a version of the Wing-T and option offense, and points have never been a problem. Scoring wasn’t much of a problem at Mercer under Lamb, but the local Bears were inconsistent on defense, and that’s likely an immediate focal point for Cronic and his eventual staff. In two seasons, Lenoir-Rhyne allowed 23.2 and 17.4 points a game. Cronic also raised the academic standards, and the Bears led the SAC in GPA both years.

Clearly, Cronic knows Georgia. His final Lenoir-Rhyne roster had more than 40 players from the Peach State, including Central Georgians Javoris Smith (Twiggs County/Southwest), Ammarian Brown (Veterans). The Bears also had representation of high-level programs Buford, Calhoun, Cartersville, and Colquitt County, among others.

And then there are ironies. In Cronic’s biography on the Lenior-Rhyne website are three testimonials. One is from his predecessor at Mercer, and another is from Carroll McCray, who spent several months with Lamb at Mercer in the startup days who ended up losing his job at Gardner-Webb the same day Lamb lost his at Mercer.

His hiring by the orange and black Bears comes two years and three days after being announced as the cardinal and black Bears’ boss.