Miami Hurricanes WR Ray Ray Joseph caught 4,000 balls a week on JUGS over summer: Goal is “just help the team”

If you want to talk about hard work and the Miami Hurricanes, look no further than true freshman WR Ray Ray Joseph. The true freshman says in the offseason he was catching as many as 4,000 balls off the JUGS machine a week. It was a competition among the receivers – catching as many balls as possible. So pity the interns who, yes, would keep track of each WRs catch numbers day by day.

“They started a JUGS competition – I was doing it before the competition started,” Joseph said. “So it was a routine for me when the competition started. I was catching like 4,000 balls a week, so I was winning all the JUGS competitions.”

The work on the JUGS should help cut down some of the drops issues of last season.

“It helps everybody get their hands better, honestly,” Joseph said. “It’s all love, but we all wanted to win so we’d stand out here all day catching JUGS (in the summer).”

Joseph has electric speed, and he’s hit 20 miles per hour in Miami drills. While he’s working in the slot along with Xavier Restrepo and Brashard Smith, who are both playmakers in their own right, Joseph expects his share of reps.

“As time goes by I’ll learn the other (receiver positions),” Joseph said. “You want to perfect the position you’re at now. There is great depth on the outside, so you want to perfect the slot, learn all the plays at the position you’re at -that’s been my main focus.”

Joseph adds “We can have two slots at the same time, all three of us (slot receivers) can be on the field at the same time.”

Joseph was a four-star recruit out of Miami Edison High School, and the prior staff didn’t recruit him hard so he wound up committing to Clemson. He decommitted to Miami when Mario Cristobal & Co. pushed hard for him, and stuck by that. He had over 1,200 all-purpose yards and 14 touchdowns as a senior, and can also return kicks at Miami.

“This spring helped me open my eyes to things I needed to work on,” Joseph says. “I’ve been really working on things like changing the pace of my routes, not running everything full speed because that’s what I did in high school, just ran everything full speed. Some routes are not meant to be ran full, full speed. So I had to pick that up.”

Joseph’s goal for himself this season?

“Just help the team,” he said. “Whenever my number is called I’ll go out there and shine. Whatever the team needs me to do, that’s what I’m going to do.”

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