Mercer looks to clean up mistakes ahead of first SoCon road test

The 1-1 Mercer Bears get prepared for their first conference road game of the season in South Carolina

MACON, Georgia – (41NBC/WMGT) – After escaping with a 22-21 win over Wofford at Five Star Stadium on Saturday night, the Mercer Bears are turning their attention to correcting mistakes before their first Southern Conference road game of the season.

Second-year head coach Mike Jacobs saw his team struggle offensively despite the victory, committing four turnovers. The defense once again stepped up, highlighted by a late fourth-down sack from Andrew Zock to seal the win.

Jacobs emphasized the need to protect the football and finish drives in the red zone, noting that the lessons will come with experience for a roster featuring young players. One of those newcomers, freshman quarterback Braden Atkinson, completed his first nine passes before throwing a pair of interceptions, but still finished with more than 300 yards passing and the game-winning touchdown strike in the win over the Terriers.

Jacobs said the focus this week is on raising the quality of practice ahead of Saturday’s trip to face The Citadel.

“I’m certainly really pleased with the outcome from Saturday,” Jacobs said. “I thought a lot of the things that we talked about last week that our team needed to do to play better and to earn the right to win, we accomplished in practice. Coach Drayton does a tremendous job. I know they’re going to be well coached. I know they’re going to play extremely hard. His background’s in special teams. I think they’re an elite special teams team. You see them with a game-breaking play almost weekly in some facet of the specials, and then they present some challenges with what they do offensively. So we’re anticipating a really good team. We’re at the point where we are as a team … with a bunch of young guys, we’re probably going to be in dog fights every week, which is why we’re going to continue to harp on the process over the end game instead of the final product. I think if we work on the things, the habits that you need to do to win, you’ll see us continue to be competitive in every game and give ourselves a chance to be winners each week.”

The Bears and Bulldogs kickoff at Johnson Hagood Stadium at 2 p.m. EST on ESPN Plus.