RUMOR - Mercer has scheduled a Home Football Game on 10/31

The only other SoCon team I’ve seen on anybody’s schedule is The Citadel. Would be nice to have them as a non conference game this year.

It’s Abilene Christian from the Southland 10/31

Yup, FUbear, Abilene Christian Fan here. When I found out we were playing you Googled Mercer fan forum and wound up here to see what y’all thought of playing us.

Our two schools have a lot in common. We are both private religiously affiliated universities that are relatively new to FCS and we both have relatively new on campus stadiums. We are both presently middle of the pack football programs from middle of the pack conferences. We both hope to replace the elite teams atop our conferences sooner rather than later, I’m sure. Both our head coaches were plucked from D2 ranks, where they were both successful. We both play Army this fall but otherwise we have no common opponents in our history so it’s hard to compare our two teams other than Sagarin, Massey, and the revised top 15 rankings from Athlon sports that have us ranked near each other.

I’m not really sure what to make of our team this year. We are relying heavily on transfers at key positions on both sides of the ball, a hit or miss proposition most of the time. We use a lot of run pass option plays on offense. Both our quarterbacks are capable of running or passing based on their read of the defense. Returning Qb Sema’j Davis is the better runner and Iowa transfer Peyton Mansell is the better passer. Our receiving corps is totally rebuilt with transfers from Texas Tech, Rice, Boise State, SMU and a juco bounce back who signed originally with Ohio State. At running back, Cal Transfer and NFL prospect Billy McKenzie is coming off an injury. If healthy he’s a difference maker. He is backed up by a capable junior and a freshman who has excelled thus far in practice. Our line returns three starters and 8 or so guys who played a lot of snaps last year to fill the other two spots.

I don’t know what to say about our defense. Our D is led by coordinator Clint Brown, who we hired from South Dakota State where he had served in the same role for a decade. We weren’t as good as we needed to be last year. Lapses on D that allowed for big plays cost us dearly, wheN our team could play well enough to beat conference champion Nicholls one week and lose to teams we should have beaten the next. We are hoping Brown has found the right comBination of assistants and players to remake the D, particularly to secondary.

All this will change, I’m sure, by the time we play you. We are opting out of spring, playing 8 games this fall. We don’t play you until late in the season so we should know a lot more about our team by then.

My thoughts about traveling to Macon on Halloween? We were told the ghosts of the Allman Brothers would perform at half time and they might be joined by Otis Redding. Should be exciting.