Mercer prepares to open Southern Conference play after bye week

The 0-1 Mercer Bears will host the Wofford Terriers to open conference play Saturday night

MACON, Georgia – (41NBC/WMGT) – The Mercer Bears return from a bye week looking for their first win of the season as they prepare to open Southern Conference play Saturday.

Second-year head coach Mike Jacobs and the Bears are seeking their first conference win of the season after capturing the SoCon title for the first time in program history last year. This season, Jacobs has had to guide a relatively young team while replacing key players from 2024, including record-breaking T.J. Moore, now with the New York Giants.

Mercer will face Wofford, a team Jacobs said is similar to the Bears, with “pockets of positive” play while working through early-season challenges.

After a tough home-opening loss to Presbyterian, Mercer (0-1) is emphasizing discipline and teaching, hoping to maximize valuable game experience for its younger players.

“They’re like tea bags. You don’t know what you get until you put them in hot water,” Jacobs said. “And that’s what we need to do, more of that with our young guys, and we got to press them as much as we can. But like I said, like there’s no tail between the legs. We got way too much football left. We got prideful kids who are good football players. They need experience. They need game experience. We need to coach them and lead them, and we need the fans to be super supportive, as they’ve been. They should hold us accountable. But we are expecting to come out. We’re expecting to play well, and we expect to be, you know, with a team that’s right there in the thick of it, because, again, we’re just getting started on what’s going to be a tough SoCon slate, and we got everything still in front of us, so we don’t have time to feel so hard for ourselves. It’s about fixing the things we can and making sure that we put them in great positions that they can execute in a really high level on Saturday.”

Mercer and Wofford kickoff at Five Star Stadium Saturday at 6 p.m.