Mickey Joseph, the new head football coach for the Grambling State Tigers, emphasized instilling fear at his opening press conference.

“It's great to be back,” he said at the start of his speech. “I'm deeply invested in the opportunity to lead the Grambling program back to dominance. We're going to restore the order. They need to fear Grambling…We got to put fear into people now, so that when we come down that hill, they know they're about to get 60 minutes of hell. That's the only way I know how.”

This is Joseph's second tour with the Grambling State Tigers. He was briefly an assistant coach, wide receivers coach, and special teams coordinator at the university in 2014 and 2015.

Joseph, now the 12th Grambling State head coach, had his most recent position in 2022 with Nebraska as an associate head coach, wide receivers coach, and passing game coordinator. He stepped in as the interim head coach when the university fired former head coach Scott Frost. Before Nebraska, Joseph was a wide receivers coach at LSU and had a pivotal role in developing NFL receivers Justin Jefferson, Ja'Marr Chase, and Terrace Marshall.

While Joseph acknowledged the need to utilize the transfer portal, he stated his firm belief in developing the program's own recruits.

“You have to recruit, because that's your lifeline,” he said. “At the end of the day, good players make good coaches. I was a good coach [at LSU] because I had Justin Jefferson, Ja'Marr Chase, and Terrace Marshall. I had all three of those dudes on the same field at one time, and I plan to do the same thing here.”

Joseph went into further detail, even revealing his ideal roster splits.

“85-15. 15 percent of the roster,” he said, “will be from the transfer protal, but 85 percent will be invested in recruiting and developing players. These days people are forgetting that the high school kid needs to be developed. You can't give up on him after three semesters and say, ‘He can't play.”

The Grambling State administration hopes that Joseph can take them over the top. Under former head coach Hue Jackson, the Tigers had a total record of 8-14. There was, however, some improvement between 2022 and 2023. The Tigers finished their most recent season with a 5-6 record, winning another two games compared to last year.

Though Joseph is the face of the next era of Grambling football, he wants to remain down to earth.

“I'm here to win, on the field, and off the field,” he said. I'm going to be a guy that you can touch. I'm going to go into Walmart. I'm not going to hide, I'm not going to say, ‘I'm too big for this.' I'm a real one, as the kids would say.”