Five things to watch for Mercer during the NDSU football game – InForum

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There’s a certain investigative reporter mentality in your favorite Five Things columnist every time North Dakota State welcomes a new opponent to the Fargodome. Who are these guys? What motivates them?

In true journalist fashion, Five Things was looking for a connection with this year’s newcomer, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Five Things has a college friend who was once the city manager of Macon, Missouri, and one of the first things he did in the 1980s was institute a slogan for the city: Macon Progress. Get it? How to progress?

The best Five Things could do this week is Jay January.

This sounds like a perfect name for North Dakota. Through a local media source, I learned that Jay January was a guard at Minot High School until he moved to Texas to finish his prep career.

January played his college ball at Mercer from 2001-2004 and earned his degree in mass communications and media studies. He’s one of the scribes of the university program, so to speak. So therein lies any sort of connection, a major one if ever there was one.

At least during the regular season, a Colorado communications professor graduated from NDSU and asked Deion Sanders to speak to his class, the play-by-play voice of East Tennessee State radio worked for a station Fargo and Murray State’s quarterbacks coach played at NDSU. Strong connections with Fargo.

Abilene Christian? Five Things went nowhere. Mercier? Not much. There is at least one Division I FCS football quarterfinal game to play and things will be settled on the field.

Here are five things to watch for in the Mercer at NDSU game:

Mercer has a long history, with the school named after a Baptist leader named Jesse Mercer. He was one of the founders of the school in 1833 and subsequently became known, and still is, for its excellent academics.

It’s not a long time in football history.

The program began in 1892, but was abandoned in 1917 due to World War I. It was later reinstated but abandoned again in 1941 due to World War II. In 2013, it came back to life.

NDSU football, meanwhile, didn’t do very well during the World Wars until the 1960s, when it established the importance of football, giving the Bison a 60-year head start in tradition. It can make a difference this time of year.

The Bisons like to run the ball. Mercer likes to prevent the other team from passing the ball. The Bears are also very good in this area, leading the FCS Division I in rushing defense, allowing just 66.0 yards per game.

Not only does this lead the FCS, but it does so by a pretty good margin. Tennessee Tech is next at 82.9 yards per game.

The Bears’ meager total includes giving up 189 yards to Alabama. This will be an interesting first quarter for the Bison: Will they even try to establish the run? Samford said damn it, passing for 378 and running for 68 in a 55-35 win over Mercer. Alabama passed for 319 yards.

NDSU has one of the most accurate passers in the FCS in quarterback Cam Miller.

There are a few more interesting twists in Mercer’s run defense: Most of the teams the Bears played weren’t exactly heavyweights during the season. Four opponents were 100th or worse out of 123 teams in rushing attack. Four others were 59th or worse.

Then again, the best rushing attack the Bears played — East Tennessee State, which finished 20th in FCS statistics — had just 13 rushing yards. Again, the Buccaneers threw for 459 yards in a 37-31 Mercer victory.

Five Things has some advice for those trying to dissect all these rushing defense stats: Wait until the end of the first quarter to make a decision with NDSU. The Bison are 14th in the nation in rushing offense with 200.6 yards per game.

Voters for the Southern Conference’s postseason awards didn’t need much convincing. Mercer defensive end Brayden Manley was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year. Defensive end Andrew Zock was named Freshman of the Year.

Cornerback TJ Moore was one of 35 finalists for the Buck Buchanan Award along with Manley. Moore and free safety Myles Redding each lead the FCS with seven interceptions. Mercer leads the FCS with 42 quarterback sacks.

“They have two guys with seven interceptions,” Bison head coach Tim Polasek said. “I respect their pass rushing ability, if you give them an inch they’ll take it. Most impressive is that they leave the field at 75 percent on third down. We will have to be on top offensively. I think this team will be ready to go and we will have to play our best football of the season.

NDSU is 9-0 against the Southern Conference, although the gap has narrowed this year. The Bison narrowly beat East Tennessee 38-35 thanks to a rare onside kick recovery late in the game.

There were also a few other close incidents. The Bison needed a school-record 29 tackles from linebacker (and current NDSU defensive coordinator) Grant Olson to beat Wofford 14-7 in the 2012 quarterfinals. A week later, they got a touchdown from the quarterback -fullback Brock Jensen on fourth down to beat Georgia Southern 23-20 in the semifinals.

A 27-9 win over Samford in the 2022 quarterfinals wasn’t exactly a complete victory. However, generally speaking, the difference between the leagues between the Missouri Valley and SoCon was noticeable in December.

Jeff would like to dispel the notion that he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he’s in his third decade reporting for Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, the Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 at the Forum, where he covers Dakota State athletics. North since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU’s Division I FCS football national titles and has written three books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough” and “Covid Kids.” He is the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” from April to August.