By T. Scott Boatright
It wasn’t always pretty, but a win is a beautiful thing for any football coach like Mickey Joseph, who saw his Grambling State Tigers roar past Central State 48-26 Saturday inside Eddie G. Robinson Memorial Stadium to climb to 2-0 on the young season.
Grambling’s 644 yards of total offense were a thing of beauty for Joseph, as were three scoring scampers of 40 or more yards.
But the two interceptions picked off by Central State and the 386 yards of offense put up by the Marauders, with the bulk coming in the second half, were anything but pretty for Joseph.
“The goal this week was to go 1-0,” Joseph said. “And we went 1-0. We’ll go back and watch the film. We did some good things, and we did some things not so well. So, we’ll go back and look at it as coaches and we’ll meet as a staff and then we’ll meet with the players as they come in.
“We’ve got some things we have to clean up. I wasn’t too happy with the three turnovers on offense or with the way they ran the ball toward the end of the game against our defense. We gave up a big kickoff return also. So we’re going to clean up some things that we have to have to win. But this was a win. We’re 2-0. We’ll fix the mistakes we made this week and we’ll get ready for TCU.”
Grambling State started strong, scoring a little more than two minutes into the game as Jamarion Parker, a transfer running back from Nebraska, raced 40 yards for a score to put the Tigers on top with 12:46 left in the opening quarter.
The Tigers added a pair of Diego Alfaro field goals before the stanza ended, the first from 19 yards out and the other from 24, to give Grambling a 13-0 advantage heading into the second quarter.
D’Shawn Ford’s 2-yard plunge to paydirt with 7:28 remaining in the first half stretched Grambling’s lead to 20-0 before Kenyon Gardner finally put Central State on the scoreboard with a 24-yard field goal with 4:48 remaining in the second quarter.
But 15 seconds later, Grambling running back Tony Phillips Jr. crossed the goal line on a 75-yard scoring scamper that put the Tigers on top 27-3.
Central State cut into that lead before halftime as quarterback Jackson Wasik hit Damon Griffin Jr. on a 12-yard scoring strike to cut Grambling’s advantage to 27-10 at halftime.
Grambling had a chance to add another score before the first half ended, thanks in large part to a 32-yard pass from starting quarterback Reginald Johnson to Jordan Bride that set the Tigers up at the Central State 13-yard line. But two plays later, a Johnson pass to the end zone was intercepted, and the Marauders ran out the clock with a running play.
Johnson got the majority of the work at quarterback for the G-Men, completing 18 of 23 passes for 258 yards, including a 50-yard pass to Tyson George, who led Grambling with five receptions for 93 yards. Bride hauled in three passes for 70 yards.
Nae’Saan Dickerson tied George for GSU’s reception lead with five for 44 yards.
Jakobe Robinson first entered the game as Grambling’s second quarterback at the 5:44 mark of the first quarter and completed 1 of 3 passes for 25 yards with a third-quarter interception that wasn’t his fault. The pass hit the GSU receiver in the hands but went through them and was intercepted by the Marauders.
Sophomore Hayden Benoit also directed Grambling’s final scoring drive, taking a quarterback sneak into the end zone with 31 seconds remaining.
Overall, Joseph seemed satisfied with the performance of his four quarterbacks.
“I thought they played for the most part OK,” Joseph said. “We had the (interception) that went right through the receiver’s hands and then one in the end zone that you can’t throw that late. That one’s on me because I wasn’t on the headsets and I should have been on the headsets to make the call that I wanted to make.
“But overall, I thought that position was a really strong position. I like the chemistry in that room. They really get along and they cheer for each other. And they don’t have long faces. They know they’re in a battle. I think that when you’re in a battle like that, you’ve got to keep them in a battle. They know that they get judged just like any other player. And if they’re not playing well, we’re going to pull them quick.”
Grambling’s other touchdown came on a 58-yard run by Byron Eaton Jr.
Phillips led the G-Men running back corps with 75 yards on two carries, with Parker adding 68 yards on five rushes and Eaton chipping in with 61 yards on three carries.
Zerek Jones totaled 48 rushing yards for Grambling on three carries, thanks to a 37-yard breakaway.
Ford had the most carries for Grambling and totaled 38 yards on the ground, while Andre Crews added 23 rushing yards on six attempts.
Throw Clyde McClendon Jr.’s 16 yards on six carries into the mix, and Grambling’s seven running backs helped the Tigers total 361 yards on the ground against the Marauders, who fell to 0-2 with the loss.
“We expect that out of Tony,” Joseph said of the three long scores and rushing yardage his running backs totaled. “This was the first week Jamarion came back (from injury), and we knew what Jamarion Parker is capable of. I recruited him when he was a sophomore in high school and I was at Nebraska. So I knew exactly what he was capable of doing.
“You know, running the ball for more than 350 yards is awesome. So, we’ve got to continue to build on this and just get better in the passing game.”
Joseph wasn’t pleased with the way the Marauders’ running game got stronger in the second half and said that will be a focus in upcoming practices.
“We were disappointed in that,” Joseph said. “I’ll let Coach Robinson get in there and he’ll fix it. We’ll find out which kids are willing to do what he asks them to do. We’ll look at the missed assignments and we’ll look at the loafs. We’ll look at the entire picture so we can fix it. We play TCU, then we get an off week and then you get into conference (play).”
Next up for the 2-0 Tigers will be a 7 p.m. game at TCU on Saturday.
