Just Getting Started
LaTonya Boyd didn't want her son to know.
As she lay in a hospital bed battling a stroke, an ensuing aneurysm along with severe blood clots near Dallas in Jan. 2014, Devante Kincade — her son — was eight hours away.
He was in Oxford, Mississippi, playing for Ole Miss, vying for a chance to be the Rebels’ starting quarterback after redshirting the previous year.
But 507 miles away, his mother was fighting a battle he didn’t even know. Until Devante’s brother picked up the phone and called him much to the dismay of LaTonya.
“I kept telling them, ‘Quit telling him stuff while he’s down there.’ I wasn’t going to worry him,” Boyd said. “I’d keep telling [Devante], ‘No baby, just focus on your school and football. Your aunt and brothers are here. Go get your education. I wouldn’t tell him if there was something wrong.”
Kincade went to his coaches at Ole Miss, including head coach Hugh Freeze with the news. He needed to get home.
And for more than a year, Kincade would regularly make the 16-hour round trip to see his mom and make sure she had everything she needed.
He’d miss the Rebels’ trip to Auburn in Oct. 2015 and find flights or gas up the car and make the trek back to Dallas.
“She didn’t want me to worry about her at all,” Kincade said. “There were times when I came to practice, and I didn’t care. I was thinking about my mom and my family.”
For his first two visits back to see her, LaTonya didn’t recognize him, unable to speak as she recovered from the stroke. On Devante’s third visit, she finally knew who he was.
Seeing his mom in that state and then returning to Oxford like it was business as usual was impossible.
Hugh Freeze and Ole Miss’ coaching staff could see it. Devante was struggling. And as much as they could, they offered their support.
And even though he’s now the head coach for the Liberty Flames, Freeze remembers Devante’s story vividly — and the pain everyone had to manage together.
“We were praying for him and being there with him as much as we could,” Freeze said, reflecting on his time with Devante at Ole Miss. “At some point in life we’re gonna go through death, disease, and whatever else adversity. If we can’t walk through that with our players, then we’re missing the boat.”
And by December of 2015, Devante announced his intentions to transfer out of Ole Miss.
The former 4-star recruit by ESPN.com and 247 Sports Composite, listed as the 12thbest dual-threat quarterback in the nation, was done in the SEC — and the FBS.
He wanted to be closer to home and wasn’t concerned with the status or stage of his next school.
Eventually, he found his way to Grambling State University — now a manageable four hours away from his mom.
SEC to the SWAC? Outsiders wondered ‘what happened’ to the highly rated SEC prospect and why he was taking a ‘step down’ in competition. But Devante knew a legacy could be created anywhere.
One month after he announced his intention to leave Ole Miss, he enrolled at Grambling — without taking a single visit.
“When I saw James “Shack” Harris, Doug Williams, Eddie G. Robinson, it was like I knew I had to go to Grambling,” Kincade said. “I could tell my kids I took a chance and bet on myself. I went with my gut feeling. It was a blessing.”
And if you know Devante Kincade, he wasn’t about to stop once he became the Tigers’ starting quarterback.
Demotion? Who are you kidding?
He was just getting started.
Never stop working
It didn’t take long for Kincade to take off as the Tigers’ starting quarterback when he arrived in 2016.
This was his second chance. And like most other opportunities in his life, he wasn’t about to give less than 100 percent.
In his junior season, he led the Tigers’ offense on a historic ride with 31 touchdown passes and 2,999 yards in 2016. Grambling finished 11-1, won the SWAC Championship and won the program’s 15th HBCU National Championship. Devante won 2016 SWAC Newcomer of the Year.
The following season, he led the Tigers to an 11-2 record and another SWAC crown, eventually losing in the HBCU National Championship.
To this day, the 22 wins over the two-season span is the most Grambling has had in the last decade, and 2016’s run is still the most wins in a single season since 2008.
It didn’t come as a shock to LaTonya.
She raised Devante to be determined and to never stop working. You want something? You’ve got to earn it through hard work.
“If he sees someone get a 10, he’ll try and get a 15,” Boyd said.
So, when his playing career at Grambling ended, Devante needed a new mission — a new outlet for his work ethic to be funneled into.
His dream of playing in the NFL didn’t pan out. He had a brief tryout scheduled with the Dallas Cowboys after the 2018 Draft, but nothing would come of it.
He’d eventually try and make it in the Canadian Football League after signing with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2018. He was released 10 days after signing. Before the crack at the CFL, Kincade signed with the Maine Mammoths of the National Arena League in May 2018, but only lasted a few days and didn’t play a game for the team.
He returned home in search of his next journey and told his mom what he decided.
“He said, ‘Momma, I’m gonna be a coach,’” Boyd recalled. “I said, ‘OK we’ll see. I believe you. If that’s what you want to do.’” And so, he started training high school kids in the Dallas area, giving young quarterback prospects education and advice from someone who’d played at some of the highest levels in college football.
He quickly fell in love with it.
He saw it as his way to give kids the shot he never got — to provide teaching and true mentorship as they begin their football careers.
Kincade knew he had to find his way into a college coaching gig — no matter the level.
“Being a coach is the most grateful thing ever because if I had been in the NFL, I wouldn’t be impacting kids the way I’ve been able to,” Kincade said. “I kind of fell in love with teaching. I knew if I had to go through the lows and mistakes to get here, God had a bigger plan. The NFL would have been more about me. I knew this was my second chance, I had to make it count.”
That’s when Hue Jackson entered the picture.
Jackson, who has over 30 years of coaching experience professionally and collegiately, was hired as the 14th head coach of the Grambling State football program on Dec. 10, 2021. Within a matter of weeks, Jackson began filling out his coaching staff to try and restore the G-Men to their historic status in the HBCU world.
One day during the summer, Jackson was one of hundreds of attendees at a Louisiana Coaches Convention — sprawling with seminars and workshops on coaching and the details of the game. He remembers seeing Kincade speak to coaches in an overview of quarterback play.
He knew right then and there he was his guy.
“To see him present the quarterback position like he did, he reminded me of myself when I was younger, with that hunger and he’s got an eagerness to grow,” Jackson recalled. “I saw a guy I could kind of groom and put him with a young group of quarterbacks that want to be put into a position to be successful.”
This was it — the opportunity of a lifetime for Kincade. A former NFL head coach just told him he was good enough — words Kincade has been waiting to hear his whole football career. He remembers his interaction with Jackson vividly, five months removed from the handshake deal that would kick start his next shot.
“(Jackson) walked straight up to me and he said, ‘You’re gonna be the quarterbacks coach at Grambling,’” Kincade said.
‘I want a statue up’
Kincade views himself like a sponge, soaking up information at every turn at Grambling.
He takes the job of teaching seriously. Young men are trusting him to come prepared to help put them in the best position to be successful.
He works close to 15 hours a day just on football. Game prep, film review, one on ones, and practice reps make up his day.
And he doesn’t apologize for following Jackson’s example in every interaction they have.
“I am in (Jackson’s) pocket,” Kincade said. “I sit down next to him in every meeting. Everything he says, I type it up. Some people come here and might be happy and complacent. I’m trying to learn more. I’m going to take it to the max.”
The constant desire to learn was part of Boyd’s parenting style.
People must see your drive if they truly want to invest their time in you, and Boyd said Kincade learned that from a young age.
Greatness won’t need to be spoken. It’ll be seen. Boyd told her boys they needed an A plan, B plan, and a C plan as they went throughout life.
“If God wanted you in the NFL, he would have put you there,” Boyd recalled saying. “He told you to be patient. (Kincade) said, ‘Momma, all I want is a chance. Coaching or playing, either one.’ He’s got it.”
One of them is bound to come true, and she told Kincade as soon as he got the Grambling job that it worked out because of his commitment to finding a new path.
He didn’t come back to Dallas and pout and blame the world for where he was now. Life is just beginning, and Boyd was proud to see her son take her messages to heart.
And now that he’s got his new chance, she laid out to her son what he needs to do every single day to keep it.
“When you have to be at work at 7, be there at 6:45,” Boyd said. “If you leave at 6 p.m., go ask Coach Jackson if he needs anything else, anything, before you leave. That’s going to show them who you are.”
Kincade’s passion to lead young players has come full circle in a short amount of time for the Tigers, particularly in the development of freshman quarterback Julian Calvez.
Calvez came into fall camp along with four other quarterbacks competing for the starting job.
Quaterius Hawkins won the initial starting job, but Calvez got his chance to play in the season opener against Arkansas State. And by the second week in October, Calvez transitioned from young backup into the Tigers’ starter.
And now, the Tigers are confident they’ve got a quarterback prospect for the future.
Kincade sees that as just one of the first steps in his time at Grambling. If you talk to him for an extended period, his goals are bold, but he speaks with conviction when he shares them.
“Grambling is about Eddie Robinson and Doug Williams,” Kincade said. “ I’m trying to match that. I want to be the best to ever do it.”
“I want them to say, ‘Devante Kincade is one of the best players and coaches to ever come through Grambling.’ I want a statue up.
“Eddie Robinson has a full-on museum, man. That’s what I’m shooting for,” he said emphatically.
