Why Mickey Joseph returned home to Nebraska for critical season

Editor’s note: Nebraska on Sept. 11 announced the firing of Scott Frost and naming of Mickey Joseph as interim coach for the remainder of the 2022 season.

LINCOLN, Neb. — An hour before kickoff Saturday, his long-awaited homecoming, 30 years and nine months after Mickey Joseph stood on the sideline at Memorial Stadium for the entirety of his senior day against Oklahoma, he waltzed to the 50-yard line and held court like he’d never left the place.

Nebraska’s 54-year-old associate head coach embraced defensive coordinator Erik Chinander. Joseph talked passionately, waving his arms. Then he found Malachi Coleman, the top-rated recruiting prospect in the state of Nebraska this year — with Joseph, there’s always a recruit — and they rubbed elbows for five minutes with former Joseph teammate Trev Alberts, the athletic director who loomed large in bringing the coach back to Lincoln last year.

All the while, Joseph trained an eye on his receivers, warming up nearby.

“I won’t go into details,” Alberts said recently of Joseph. “But when I heard what his first meeting was like here in the wide receiver room, I knew we were in a good position.”

Four hours after his meeting at midfield, Joseph watched in his all-black game-day attire on the east sideline as the clock ticked under 10 minutes in the fourth quarter against North Dakota. With the Huskers backed inside their 10-yard line in the south end zone, facing a third-and-14 and up by a touchdown, quarterback Casey Thompson floated a pass deep to his left toward Trey Palmer.

In a Nebraska uniform this fall only because Joseph brought him along from their last stop together at LSU, Palmer adjusted to Thompson’s throw and won the battle against a defender for a gain of 31 yards.

It might have saved victory for the Huskers, who snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 38-17 win against the Fighting Hawks of the FCS. Nebraska scored eight plays after Palmer’s key catch, the second of three unanswered touchdowns for the Huskers (1-1 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) in the final 18 minutes to unlock an even contest.

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“This team can be a great team,” fifth-year Nebraska coach Scott Frost said Saturday. “It’s not right now.”

For Joseph, the move back to Lincoln was never about taking an easy road or the most enjoyable path.

He could have stayed in Baton Rouge last December and jockeyed for a spot as an ace recruiter in his home state of Louisiana on coach Brian Kelly’s LSU staff. But three decades after Joseph sat the bench as a fifth-year senior for coach Tom Osborne, the former QB felt a pull to return and help work to restore winning ways at Nebraska.

“It was always Nebraska, always,” said Hank Tierney, Joseph’s high school coach at Marrero (La.) Archbishop Shaw.

Joseph lamented the 2003 firing of Frank Solich. He kept tabs on the quarterbacks in Lincoln and watched the Huskers when his schedule permitted at coaching stops in Oklahoma, Mississippi and three schools in Louisiana.

“This was always inside him,” said Priscilla Joseph, Mickey’s wife of six years. “He would say, ‘I want to go back and give back’ to let Nebraska people know what Nebraska meant to him. And what it means to him. Nebraska is a huge part of who he is.”

Without Nebraska fans and the people he met in Lincoln three decades ago, Joseph said after his return last winter, he wouldn’t be here today — not in this position as a coach.

“They gave me a foundation,” he said. “They accepted me for who I was.”

And there he was Saturday, back in the familiar stadium. A savior? No. A part of the Huskers’ long-term future? Who knows.

These are tenuous times in Lincoln. Frost’s job security dominates discussion. But in playing his part in the recruitment of Joseph last year after Frost fired four offensive coaches late in a fifth consecutive losing season at the school, Alberts asked for Joseph’s trust, according to the people closest to the coach.

He got it.

“Mickey is who he is,” Alberts said before this season began. “He’s done a remarkable job.”

Nebraska needed Joseph once before. In the fall of 1986, he rated among the top college prospects nationally. He was a five-star recruit, by the standards of today.

In a class that featured the likes of Emmitt Smith, Junior Seau, Ricky Watters and Chris Zorich, Joseph, the option QB, took a backseat to no one. Notre Dame and coach Lou Holtz offered a scholarship. But Osborne and Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer captured Joseph’s attention.

The Sooners offered glam. Nebraska sold him on work. Joseph fell for OU. His mother, Linda, preferred Osborne.

“He went to Nebraska because of Tom Osborne,” Tierney said.

Ahead of signing day in February 1987, the recruiting struggle intensified. Osborne and Nebraska’s lead recruiter, assistant coach Jack Pierce, received word that Oklahoma had increased its effort. So the Nebraska coaches traveled to Marrero, separated by the Mississippi River to the south of New Orleans.

Switzer was there, too, permissible under NCAA rules at the time. They gathered outside the high school on signing day as Joseph announced his decision, the Huskers, in front of a packed gathering inside.

At Nebraska, Joseph learned at first under Steve Taylor, the QB from California who started for four seasons.

Osborne, though, declined to involve Taylor in the recruitment of Joseph.

“Coach kept him as far (from me) as possible,” Taylor said.

But Taylor, before his junior year in 1987, saw a highlight video of Joseph. It motivated Taylor, he said. “I rededicated myself to football.”

A longtime Lincoln realtor who played professionally in Canada, Taylor relayed the story of Joseph’s impact to the coach when they reconnected recently, telling Joseph that he positively impacted the career of the older QB.

“I’m excited that he’s back,” Taylor said. “I admire him just for what he’s done — his growth and his love for the game and the way he treats his kids. He lives and dies football. And he loves kids, which is what you want in a coach.

“Whatever Nebraska asks of him, Mickey is up for the task. He’s going to do great things. It will happen. I just know it will.”

Joseph at Nebraska redshirted in his first year. He sat behind Taylor in 1988 and Gerry Gdowski in 1989. Joseph started the majority of the season in 1990. He threw for 624 yards and rushed for 554 as a junior but sustained a severe leg laceration against Oklahoma in a 45-10 defeat and missed the bowl game in a 9-3 finish.

In 1991, Joseph lost the job to Keithen McCant, the lesser-heralded of Osborne’s two QB signees in the 1987 class.

“He didn’t have that storybook career,” Taylor said, “but he still has that love for Nebraska. His love is no less than my love for Nebraska. That’s a true Husker.”

Pierce died at age 77 in August after connecting again this year with Joseph. His influence, alongside Tierney and Osborne, remain with Joseph in his coaching style. He’s about people above all else, Joseph’s wife said.

“The man’s heart is made of gold,” Priscilla Joseph said. “I’ve never met somebody who just loves so much. He gets invested with his players on such a personal level.”

That investment translates to success in recruiting.

Joseph’s work has paid dividends this year for Frost and the Huskers. Among the Huskers’ 14 commitments for the Class of 2023 are wide receiver Omarion Miller, a four-star prospect from Vivian, La. In addition to the transfer Palmer, a top pass catcher this season, Joseph helped Nebraska land wide receiver Decoldest Crawford and running back Ajay Allen as signees out of Louisiana high schools.

“He’s like a father,” Palmer said. “He looks at me like his own. So to have somebody like that in my life, on the field and off the field, is very good.”

Alberts can see the trust.

“They trust him,” Alberts said. “He’s a positive guy in a world of negativity. And he’s authentic. Sometimes as a player, I wouldn’t like it, but he’s going to tell you the truth. And so I think he’s engendered the trust of players and families just in how he approaches conversations.”

It’s no different in his personal life. In April, Archbishop Shaw inducted Tierney into its hall of fame. Joseph served as the presenter at his ceremony, attended by a long list of Joseph’s former classmates. Some of them did not play football.

“Mickey knew everybody,” Tierney said. “He knew all of their names. That’s just him.”

In Lincoln this year, he formed a bond with former Nebraska linebacker Terrell Farley, a star from the mid-’90s who did not play with Joseph. Farley stops by the Joseph house regularly, Priscilla Joseph said, checking on their 2-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter.

Mickey and Priscilla’s daughter, Malania, grew close with former LSU coach Ed Orgeron. Orgeron, in fact, sent Joseph a text message last week after Nebraska returned from its season-opening trip to Ireland, asking Mickey to “tell my girl I miss her.”

In Louisiana, the Joseph name resonates beyond football. After Mickey graduated, his brothers Vance and Sammy starred at Shaw. Both played at Colorado. Sammy finished his career at LSU, then got into coaching. He’s now at Memphis. Vance served as head coach of the Denver Broncos in 2017 and ’18 and has worked since 2019 as defensive coordinator for the Arizona Cardinals.

For the Joseph family (Mickey, Vance, Terry and Derrick, left to right), football is who they are. (Courtesy of Joseph family)

Their cousins, Terry and Derrick Joseph, also played for Tierney. Terry played baseball in college before a career in football coaching that included a stint at Nebraska as the secondary coach in 2012 and ’13. He’s in his second season at Texas as the secondary coach. Derrick played quarterback at Tulane and trains athletes in New Orleans.

The five Joseph boys were inseparable as kids. They’re equally as close today.

“You can’t tell them they’re cousins,” Priscilla Joseph said. “They’re brothers. And realistically, I don’t know what Mickey or any of them would do if they weren’t coaching.”

Said Derrick Joseph: “For us, Joseph equals football.”

For Mickey, football equals Nebraska.

Of this challenge underway Lincoln, Tierney said, “I know he took it personal.”

Mickey has said he’d have it no other way. He coaches his players hard, because it’s all he knows. But he loves them just as intensely.

“He’s been so excited to get back,” Derrick Joseph said. “This is a full circle thing for him.”

It’s a circle that inched a notch closer to completion Saturday at Memorial Stadium.

(Photo of Mickey Joseph and Malachi Coleman, right: Mitch Sherman / The Athletic)

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