After bounceback win over Western Carolina, Mercer hosts familiar faces from ETSU for Homecoming game

It sounds unlikely, but one of the more important plays of Mercer’s football season so far looked at first like it would be an insignificant 1-yard gain.

The Bears had a three-point lead late and were trying to run out the clock on their fourth ranked win of the season over No. 24 Western Carolina, hoping to take a commanding position atop the Southern Conference with it.

Running back Dwayne McGee already had almost 200 yards rushing in Saturday’s game. It looked like he’d only add one more yard to that total when the Catamounts defense swarmed around McGee and his blockers right near the line of scrimmage.

When the dust settled, though, McGee had instead traveled 21 yards after keeping his legs churning and getting a boost from the offensive line, much to the delight of the Mercer crowd. 

The play — a simple solid run on paper but a representation of the Bears’ attitude this season on the gridiron — opened the door for Mercer’s putaway drive, as the Bears marched down the field on the ground and punched in a touchdown to put the finishing touches on a key 44-34 win over Western Carolina.

“You wanna talk about a character run when we’re in a four minute situation trying to run the clock out. They had kind of stuffed it up, but between the lineman and McGee churning his feet we ended up with a 14 or 15-yard gain on that play,” head coach Mike Jacobs said after the game Saturday. “I thought that spoke very loudly on who you’re gonna be for the rest of the game.”

Though the game was won on other plays — many of them also courtesy of McGee, who had touchdown jaunts of 64 and 59 yards on the way to 223 highlight-laden yards rushing — the run encapsulated Mercer’s ability to bounce back from a variety of setbacks to start the season 7-1 and give itself a shot at the conference title.

“Huge shoutout to the offensive line, by the way. They carried me,” he said. “I don’t know how I kept moving. (Offensive lineman) Xavier Jennings literally picked me up and took me for 11 yards. So that probably counts on my stat sheet, but we should probably give it to him.”

That attitude kept up during Monday’s press conference, where Jacobs and two of his players talked about that run near the end of the game and other moments.

“He kind of just fell into my arms,” said Jennings, who played in his first game all year Saturday after dealing with injuries, of McGee’s late statement run.

Some degree of luck played into the chunk play, yes, but the way Jennings, McGee and the rest of the offense pushed forward demonstrated an attitude Jacobs has asked his team to strive for all year.

“You saw a team that had a really great week of practice, I think our preparation was arguably the best we’ve had this year,” Jacobs said Monday. “We had the slow start at Samford… it was a little bit of a slower start this time, but you kind of knew Western was going to make some plays as powerful as their offense is. I continue to be impressed with how our guys stay the course.”

Jacobs said that the sluggish start against Samford, a start that put the Bears into a 28-0 midway through the first quarter, was more due to mental miscues by Mercer. Saturday’s game looked different, and the team stayed on-schedule because of it.

The Bears stayed in the game and, though the defense let up some points, got key stops when they needed them. Mercer’s offense was perhaps more explosive than it has been all year, getting huge momentum boosts thanks to big runs by McGee and impressive throws from freshman quarterback Whit Newbauer to receiver Kelin Parsons.

“We were more consistent, we were more physical at the point of attack. I’ve talked since I got on this campus about dominating the lines of scrimmage,” Jacobs said. “I feel like Dwayne McGee was on the verge of a breakout game… for him to have that big of a game on Saturday for us was huge.”

Sophomore kicker Reice Griffiths appeared at the press conference after hitting three field goals to give the Bears’ offense a boost Saturday.

“I just go out there with the same mindset, just keeping myself calm… I always want to help my team and put points on the board any time I can,” he said.

Newbauer’s performance at quarterback was also notable with normal starter D.J. Smith still out with a lingering ankle injury that he re-aggravated in the Samford loss. 

With another ranked win out of the way, one more big FCS ranked matchup within the Southern Conference looms for the Bears this week: Tre Lamb, nephew of Mercer’s first modern-era coach, Bobby Lamb, leads the No. 24 ETSU Buccaneers into Five Star Stadium this weekend.

Lamb, who was quarterbacks coach under his uncle at Mercer from 2014 to 2017 and the head coach of Gardner-Webb before landing at ETSU, is 5-4 so far with a 3-1 record in the SoCon in his first season in Tennessee.

“Tre Lamb has done a great job as a head coach, first at Gardner-Webb, who we played in the first round of the playoffs last year,” Jacobs said. “He took a lot of that team with him, I think he had almost 38 transfers that went with him to ETSU… I think they’ve done a great job, I think their quarterback (Jaylen King) is probably the most athletic kid that we’ve seen. He’ll be more involved in the run game than we’ve seen.”

King has more than 500 yards rushing to pair with more than 1300 yards passing for the Buccaneers, whose only loss in the conference came against Chattanooga.

Mercer’s last meeting with Lamb in the playoffs last season while he was at Gardner-Webb ended in a 17-7 Bears victory.The Bears are 5-4 all-time against ETSU since 2015, including a 4-1 record at home against the Bucs.