By T. SCOTT BOATRIGHT
GRAMBLING — Mickey Joseph doesn’t need to see more effort, but he does expect to see more focus and better execution as his Grambling State Tigers play host to East Texas A&M in a contest set to kick off at 6 p.m. Saturday at Eddie G. Robinson Memorial Stadium.
The Tigers stand at 2-1 after squeaking out a 37-31 overtime home win over Division II Kentucky State last weekend in a victory Joseph wasn’t particularly happy with other than the final outcome.
He expects to see a different GSU football team out on the field this weekend — a more focused team.
“After watching the tape, you take your hat off to Kentucky State,” Joseph said. “They did some things that if we would have done what we were coached to do, those things wouldn’t have happened. And that’s on me. And we assure you we’re going to fix it.
“We’re going to find the players that want to listen and take instruction from their coaches, and make sure those kids are on the field. We’ll do a better job with our rotation, but the main thing is getting these kids to do what we asked them to do. I’ll take the blame. We’ll get it fixed.”
After starting the season with a romp over NAIA member Langston in Shreveport before being predictably smothered by FBS No. 1 Ohio State, Joseph feels his team took Kentucky State lightly and didn’t play with the focus coaches had sought leading to that contest.
“You go from playing the No. 1 team in the country to a D-II team, so the way that generation thinks, and I know because I have daughters that age, they can’t process that,” Joseph said. “They’re like, this is the No. 1 team, now we have to go play a D-II team, so I’m going to try to get some stats.’ That wasn’t the case. We play football around here doing things the right way.”
East Texas A&M comes into the contest at 0-2 with big losses to SMU (42-13) and Florida State (77-3).
After edging the Lions 35-28 in overtime last year in Commerce, Texas, Joseph said his Tigers won’t overlook the Southland Conference member – a Division II national champion last decade before moving up to the FCS.
“They’re a well-coached football team,” Joseph said of the Lions. “People are looking at them after the first two games — you can’t compare because they played SMU and they played Florida State. Then they had a (bye). So, you can’t compare and say they’re not a good football team because of the scores. They’re a good football team. They do a good job over there. We were in a dogfight with them last year.
“They do a lot of different things on defense and a lot of different things on offense that we’ve got to get ready for. But it’s a solid football team. They just played two Power 5 teams. They had to play two money games. We only had to play one.”
Joseph also knows the Lions he’s seen on video this week probably won’t be the same team his Tigers will be facing this weekend.
“No, we haven’t seen who they are,” Joseph said. “This playing field for them is even for the first time this season. They played two really good opponents. Their speed of the game is going to be there.
“We’re going to have to catch up to them because they played a team, two teams, that are very good and then had a week off. So that’s still in them. The speed of the game is still in them. So now we’ve got to practice a little faster this week to get things going. When you think freely, you play freely.”
