Mickey Joseph “means business” in Nebraska’s wide receiver room

Nebraska wide receiver coach Mickey Joseph isn’t messing around and his new players knew it from the moment they met him.

Joseph, who was hired by Husker Head Coach Scott Frost in December, immediately established his high standards and expectations for the receiver room.

“I don’t eff around,” wide receiver Alante Brown said of what Joseph told the group during their first meeting. “You’re going to do what I do and you’re gonna do what I say and that’s how I want it.”

Wide receiver Omar Manning said Joseph challenged each receiver on the first day to catch 5,000 before spring practice. Joseph said all but one or two players catch more than 5,000 balls.

“We catch regardless but just him coming in and setting that tone, we see he means business,” Manning said.

Both Brown and Manning said they prefer a coach that holds them accountable.

“He holds us to a high standard and we like it,” Brown said. “We like to be pushed. We like to get better every day. That’s the thing with our room, we like to learn, we like to see our mistakes and it honestly brought us closer.”

Manning said his junior college coach at Kilgore College was also blunt like Joseph.

“That’s my style, that’s what I play with,” the 6-foot-4, 225-pound junior said. “I want a coach to be in my ear telling me what I did wrong or right. On every play he looks at he talks to us (about). That’s what I like and that’s the coaches I like to play for.”

Joseph has brought more energy to the room also.

“The energy from last year came from us,” Brown said. “We had to start the energy. But if Mickey comes in ‘let’s go’. ‘I don’t expect nothing less than this,’ we’re held to that standard and we want to succeed.”

Brown, a 5-10, 185-pound sophomore, said Joseph brings the dog out in him.

“If practice is going, we’re locked in. He doesn’t like anything, I’ma fix it,” he said. “Anything he tells us to do, we’re going to do it. If he wants it this way, we’re going to do it. His energy is different. It gets us up and gets us ready to go.”

With a new coach and a new offensive coordinator in Mark Whipple, the Husker wide receivers are being forced to learn a lot, just how Joseph prefers it. He gave the media a taste of his expectations for his players during Tuesday’s press conference at Memorial Stadium.

“They got to continue to improve and I’m going to put pressure on them,” the former LSU coach. “I spoke to all of them, they’re playing for roster spots. It’s not the old days where you’re just going to sit here for three years and not play. You’re playing for roster spots.”

Joseph continued: “You’re going to get it done (here) or you’re going to get it done somewhere else. We’re not just going to sit back and try to help you develop and you’re not going to continue to develop. If you don’t want to develop, I don’t know if you’re going to be able to play for me.”

While Joseph has high demands for his players on the field, he also gets to know each of them individually. Brown said that everyone clicked with Joseph right away.

His coach knows how to get the most out of each individual player, Brown said. He said Joseph talks to Brown differently than he talks to Oliver Martin or Trey Palmer, for example.

“He knows how to talk to his kids,” Brown said. “Even when we’re tired, he brings that dog out, “we need grit, we need everything you have because we’re trying to turn this over.”