Know Your Foe: Mercer Bears
2024 record: 6-0 (3-0 SoCon)
Last Week: W vs Princeton, 34-7
Head Coach: Mike Jacobs (1st season)
Last Meeting: Mercer W, 28-21
Betting: Mercer -8.5, Samford ML +240, O/U 51.5
TV: ESPN+
Kick Off: 2:00pm CT
Fun Fact: Mercer holds the longest losing streak in this series with eight straight losses.
Samford is back at home after a close loss on the road at ETSU, 31-28. The Samford defense turned over the Bucs four times but the Samford offense did not score a point off of those turnovers. ETSU shut out Samford in the fourth quarter and scored 10 points of their own. On offense, Samford could not sustain drives on offense and poor offensive line play put the Bulldog offense in long passing situations.
The ETSU defense had seven sacks, 2 QB hurries, and 16 tackles for loss.
It should get easier right? Well not exactly as the number seven ranked team in the country is rolling into Homewood. The Mercer Bears are undefeated while being powered by a suffocating defense. In their six games, Mercer has only allowed 21 points once this season. Under new head coach Mike Jacobs, he obviously inherited a good situation especially on defense.
Instead of starting with the Mercer offense, let’s start off with the Mercer defense.
As stated before, this Bears defense is maybe the best in the entire country. Here is where this defense ranks in the FCS in multiple categories.
Scoring Defense - #1
Total Defense - #2
Rushing Defense - #1
3rd Down Conversion Defense - #2
Defensive TD’s - Tied #1
1st Down Defense - #2
Passes Intercepted - #1
Team Passing Efficiency Defense - #1
Red Zone Defense - #2
Team Sacks - #1
Team TFL’s - #6
Turnover Margin - #3
Mercer is sixth in the entire country in tackles for loss and no worse than third in many other categories. This stat is pretty mind blowing. Mercer has only allowed 38.8 rushing yards per game. The next closest is Nicholls at allowing 72.5 yards per game on the ground.
The Bears leading tackler is LB Isaac Dowling with 36 total tackles. LB Marques Thomas, a graduate of McAdory High School in Birmingham, Alabama, is the second leading tackler with 32 total tackles. Thomas is also second in tackles for loss with six.
LB Ken Standley, another returner from last year, has 30 total tackles. Dowling, Thomas, and Standley are all seniors that stayed in Macon even with the coaching change. This defense is filled with senior leaders.
Another senior is DB TJ Moore who has five of Mercer’s 13 interceptions on the season and had three by himself against Princeton last week. Freshman DL Andrew Zock leads the Bears in sacks with four and senior DL Brayden Manley has three sacks.
The Samford offense will have an extremely tough task in attacking this Mercer defense.
Meanwhile, the Mercer offense has not been quite as dominant but with this defense, they do not have to. Mercer sits in the middle of the Southern Conference in passing yards per game with 218.8.
They have had to play three quarterbacks this season due to an injury to junior starter DJ Smith. Jacobs in his weekly press conference indicated that Smith will be available to play on Saturday. Smith got injured in the Wofford game a couple weeks ago and did not play against Princeton.
QB Hess Horne started against Princeton and also 6’6” true freshman Whitt Newbauer played the majority of the game.
Smith has thrown for 981 yards this season along with eight touchdowns. He has thrown an interception in each of the five games he has played in. Smith does lead the SoCon in completion percentage (77%) but that is just on 95 attempts which is the lowest in the conference. Smith is also very mobile as he has 167 yards rushing and three touchdowns.
As a team, Mercer sits second in the SoCon in total rushing yards. RB Dwayne McGee leads the team in rushing with 504 yards. McGee has rushed for 4.6 yards a carry and has two games with over 100 yards rushing
Sophomore WR Brayden Smith leads the team in receiving yards with 282 yards and is tied for first with three touchdowns. WR Kelin Parsons has 238 receiving yards.
These seventh ranked Mercer Bears are powered by one of the best defenses in the country by far. This offense just has to be good enough and it has been for Mercer to be undefeated.
So how will this Samford offense, who has struggled to sustain drives, fare against this vaunted defense? This is the biggest key to this game. Samford did struggle in the red zone last time at home against VMI. They must find a way to execute.
On Saturday, Samford gets to host one of the best teams in the entire country. What an opportunity for this football team, can they take advantage of it?
