Mercer Football Improved to 4-0; Sets sights on ranked road SOCON showdown
The Mercer Bears (4-0) learned a lot from their home conference win over The Citadel 38-21 on Saturday
MACON, Georgia – (41NBC/WMGT) – The Mercer University football team is now 4-0 after their 38-21 home conference victory over The Citadel Saturday night. The Bears are now ranked 12th and 13th respectively, according to Stats Perform and AFCA Coaches Poll. The conference home game came close in the first half, before SOCON Defensive Player of the Week TJ Moore ran back a pick-six with a minute left in the first half to put Mercer up 28-14 at halftime, and the Bears didn’t look back.
Quarterback DJ Smith and SOCON Offensive Player of the Week lead the Bears to 38 points behind his two passing and two rushing touchdowns.
Now, Mercer prepares to face a ranked 2-1 Wofford team on the road in another tough SOCON test. Head Coach Mike Jacobs, Sophomore Defensive Lineman Brayden Manley, and Sophomore Running Back Tyrell Coard spoke to the media at their weekly press conference on how there are things to work on heading into this matchup with the Terriers. However, the Bears are confident coming off their win against the Bulldogs and are ready to learn more as they head to their road ranked conference matchup Saturday in South Carolina.
Coach Jacobs said “anytime you win by three scores again I’m not going to feel bad about it, but there is certainly some things that we need to clean up. Its the same stuff, right? We played three pretty good quarters of football there. I’d probably like to throw the second quarter out, with the exception of the last minute and a half.”
Coach Jacobs went on to say, “All in all, offensively I thought we did a good job establishing the run game against a defense that presented some different looks. I thought DJ smith, our quarterback, played his most complete game of the season yet, both from a decision making stand point in the pass game and being decisive when he did run, running with his feet, and really played extremely well. Defensively, you saw more out of our rush defense. Again, we’ve continue to be a tough outfit to run the football consistently on. Force them into being one dimensional. With the exception of a few big plays in the pass game, I thought we played really well defensively.”
Manley touched on the extra pressure he feels from opponents with the preseason accolades he received, including Preseason All-SOCON as a underclassmen. “Guys have been game planning for me. I’ve been noticing I’ve been getting double-teamed, triple-teamed sometimes so, when you give me an accolade like that, I’m so young, you put a lot of pressure on me, but I’m ready for the pressure. They say pressure makes diamonds.”
Coard told the media, “we have one goal in our mind and that’s to win the SOCON championship. I think all of our guys have bought in to that with our head coach Mike Jacobs putting us in the best situations that we can be to be successful and win that SOCON championship.”
Mercer kicks off their road game with Wofford Saturday at 1:30 p.m.
