Mickey Joseph prior to Grambling State facing Ohio State: 'We understand what's gonna happen'

Grambling State will travel to play No. 1 Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday afternoon. Even head coach Mickey Joseph realizes what that will likely mean for the Tigers this weekend.

Joseph spoke about his team’s upcoming game with the Buckeyes during a press conference this week. That included a joke to start off that he hopes their bands at least match up against one another well in ‘The Shoe.’

“Well, first of all, they got a great band. We have a great band, and we’re going to compete as a band,” Joseph said with a smile. “But, I’m just joking right now.”

However, the fact of the matter is, Ohio State is all but certain to start the season at 2-0 and send Grambling to 1-1 after whatever happens on Saturday. The Buckeyes are the No. 1 team in the nation in this week’s edition of the AP Poll after opening their year with a win over Texas, which was No. 1 itself. The Buckeyes are still the defending national champions, too, with Ryan Day having more than enough talent to potentially repeat as well, which his team justified in how it played this past weekend to begin the fall.

BetMGM has not released a spread for this matchup between a program from the Big Ten and a program from the SWAC and between FBS and FCS, but the Buckeyes will likely be favored by several scores if one ever hits. Joseph realizes that, too, as his team prepares to go into this specific game.

“We understand what we’re getting into. We understand what’s gonna happen,” Joseph said. “We understand it’s not balanced in the scholarships, not balanced in what they have resources-wise and what we have resources-wise. We all know why we’re playing the game.

“We know, right now, they’re probably going to be number one team in the country. It’s a great opportunity. You know, they’re a well-coached football team. You don’t win games like that, win a national championship on that level and not be good. (Running through people is) what this team is going to do this year, you know, with the talent that they have. Like I said, they’re well-coached. Coach Day does a great job with those players because, sometimes, when you have a talented group, they’re harder to coach than a non-talented team. So, he has a talented group, so he’s done a great job with his coaches and with his players to get where they’re at. And they had a great showing against Texas.”

That being the case, Joseph is only focused on two aspects of this game for Grambling State. Those are that his team play a clean matchup and that his team plays hard in at least trying to compete with Ohio State.

“I spoke to the coaches today and said the game better be clean. It better be clean. And, clean to me is that we don’t have nine people on the field, we don’t have thirteen people on the field. It’s clean,” Joseph said. “We play within the system and we swing, you know. We swing and we fight every play.

“I want to be clean. I want to have the correct personnel in. I want to line up right. And, if you get beat because there’s a man-on-man and he beats you? Like, I want you to get back up the next play and I want you to fight again,” said Joseph. “It’s not how many times you’re going to get knocked down. It’s how many times you’re going to get up, you know.”

This isn’t about whether Ohio State will win, but by how much the Buckeyes will win by on Saturday. Even so, Joseph says Grambling State is still readying itself for a game that they’ll play, even if it’s very, very likely they’ll be coming out of it with a loss.

“So, you know, like I said, we’re going to practice, we’re going to prepare. We know they’re going to prepare for us. And, we’re going to just go and we’re going to ask our kids to play hard one play at a time,” Joseph said. “So, we’re going to go into this game knowing what we’re getting into, but also we’re going to play hard one play at a time.”