It was January, in Nashville at the AFCA Coaches Convention, and Mike Jacobs already had centered his focus on preparations to guide Lenoir-Rhyne into the 2024 season.
Jacobs had, after all, chartered the Bears into the NCAA Division II Semifinals with a 13-win campaign last fall, and he figured the coaching carousel had spun its forces that might have impacted him.
He even had bumped into Drew Cronic, the coach whom Jacobs had replaced at Lenoir-Rhyne and who had just guided Mercer into the second round of the FCS Playoffs.
“I had had some interest during I guess what would be the normal cycle, towards the beginning of December, but I also really liked what we had going on at Lenoir-Rhyne,” Jacobs, a former Ohio State offensive lineman, tells FootballScoop. “I actually ran into Coach Cronic, and I didn’t have any indication he was leaving.
“A couple days later, it was announced that he was heading to Navy.”
And Mercer officials, already intrigued by Jacobs and also looking to sustain Cronic’s turnaround success, initiated the process.
Consistency was a target, and Jacobs had emerged the past decade as one of the single-most consistent winners at any level of NCAA football.
Consider:
Jacobs guided NCAA Division II program Notre Dame (Ohio) to 42 wins in four years, as well as NCAA D2 Playoffs quarterfinals and semifinals berths.
He followed up that run with 29 wins in three full seasons atop L-R, which also advanced to the NCAA D2 Semifinals last fall.
In fact, in seven full seasons as an NCAA head coach, Jacobs has never engineered less than an eight-win season.
“I think the consistency of what we have, a number of my assistants have been with me since I was at Notre Dame College,” says Jacobs, carrying on a family coaching tradition following the stellar path of his late father, Mike T. Jacobs, and his stints under West Virginia legend Don Nehlen and former Ohio State great John Cooper. “We’ve been able to build a program at times with very little resources and we’ve been able to win at a place like Lenoir-Rhyne with a ton of resources and we’ve done it through doing a really great job evaluating high school talent and developing once they’re on campus.
“I just think that our staff consistency and the fact we’ve now done it two different places, two different regions of the country, show that our process works.”
Unsurprisingly, for a guy who began his collegiate playing career under Cooper at Ohio State and finished under the legendary Jim Tressel, Jacobs crafted a program blueprint hinged on trench superiority.
Offensive line and wide receiver were priority targets for Jacobs & Co. in recruiting after they were hired atop Mercer in late January; the Bears returned more starters on the defensive side of the ball.
They reached the Power Conference level to land a trio of expected impact players: Duke transfer wideout Apollos Cook, defensive lineman Brayden Dudley, previously of West Virginia; Victor Pless, former defensive back under PJ Fleck at Minnesota.
Five of the dozen newcomers officially welcomed last month by the Bears were linemen; additionally, tailback Dwayne McGee reunited with his former Lenoir-Rhyne head coach after McGee gashed NCAA Division II defenses for back-to-back All-America honors in 2022-23, part of his more than 4,600 career rushing yards.
“We’re going to highly value the line of scrimmage on both sides of ball, because we strongly believe If you want to compete nationally and for a national championship, you have to win the line of scrimmage,” says Jacobs, then sharing additional insight into his staff’s approach.
“We believe at a high level of doing the simple things well. I think too often, people get caught up in calling plays and what plays can they call and what can they do, and it’s important, and maybe this is the fact that at heart, I’m an offensive lineman all the time, we spend an exorbitant amount of our football time working on fundamentals, running, blocking, tackling, harping technique and doing the small things well.”
Platformed off a four-tiered “pyramid for success” that Jacobs instilled at each stop along his coaching journey, Mercer has positioned itself to perhaps build upon its nine-win 2023 season but also constructed a roster that will create its own identity.
“We’ll be more of the characteristics we’ve shown, we’ll be multiple on offense; I would consider it pro-style offense,” says Jacobs. “Today’s NFL-type offensive game, run the football, use RPOs, have the ability for heavy play-action pass off of it. The defense then has got to be multiple because offenses are so multiple. But you’re going to see us running to the football, finishing tackles.
“One thing I’ve done since I’ve been anywhere, it’s kind of have a pyramid of success, four core values of our program and we build everything off of that. The things we’ve really been talking about with players are the intent with which we do anything and the urgency with which we do it. Intent and urgency are the two things harped on the most.”
Coaches still coach, even when they no longer are in coaching. Jacobs knows this from family, knows firsthand.
So, he isn’t particularly surprised earlier this year when a package arrives for him at Mercer.
The sender? Tressel.
“After I got the Mercer job, I got a package from Coach Tressel, he sent me some reading material,” Jacobs recalls. “But he also sent me a sheet from my senior year at Ohio State, which was his first year.
“It showed that my No. 1 long-term goal was to be a college football coach and someday be a head coach. It had been 23 years and he sent me that. The depth of the relationships and his ability to recall things is tremendous. I’m blessed being a son of a coach to have seen it done so many ways.
“I’ve been remarkably blessed to have some unbelievable all-time coaches, very forward-thinking, did things the right way and be very family driven. I’ve been able to watch it, literally for my entire life, and I’m just bringing along little pieces of each of those guys.”
All of which helps form the singular piece for the success of a Jacobs program: consistency.