Edison WR Joseph on UM pledge: ‘I just love being home and making an impact on the city’
Nathaniel Joseph is busy this time of year, with his senior year of high school starting last week, a new quarterback to build chemistry with at Edison and a looming matchup with a nationally ranked opponent set for Saturday in Clarkston, Georgia, to kick off his senior season.
In the middle of it all, he’s still making sure to carve out time to do some recruiting for the Miami Hurricanes. On Friday, Joseph unofficially began his senior season with a preseason game in Miramar, but he was out at a game Thursday, too, to check out Dillard’s Christopher Johnson.
“He was getting about 30 yards a carry,” Joseph said. “I was like, Man, I’ve got to go get him.”
After the game, Joseph opened up Twitter, pulled up Johnson’s page and fired off a direct message to the four-star running back. “We need you down there in Coral Gables,” Joseph wrote him, trying to do his part in filling in one of the missing pieces in the Hurricanes’ Class of 2023.
Right now, Joseph is Miami’s highest-ranked commit from South Florida, according to the 247Sports composite rankings for the 2023 recruiting cycle, and this title tends to come with a responsibility to be a leader in the recruiting class.
It’s one Joseph embraces.
“It’s amazing,” Joseph said. “I just love being home and making an impact on the city, and just trying to keep most of the kids home and just building this Canes family down there, so we can get something going down in Coral Gables.”
Johnson, who’s planning to make a commitment at some point in the fall, is one of the Hurricanes’ top remaining targets left in the Miami metropolitan area and probably their best shot at adding another offensive weapon from their typical recruiting footprint.
Joseph’s biggest priority, though, is finding another receiver to follow him. The 5-foot-8, 170-pound wideout said he was working hard at recruiting Northwestern’s Andy Jean and Avant Garde Academy’s William Fowles — both four-star wide receivers — before they committed elsewhere earlier this summer. The Hurricanes, however, are still trying to lure Jean to Miami, so Joseph’s efforts may not go to waste.
Whomever the Hurricanes decide to prioritize, Joseph said he’ll be all over him.
“You just point it out,” Joseph said, “and I’ll go get him.”
In the meantime, Joseph wants to do anything he can to paint the Hurricanes in a good light.
For evidence, look back to Wednesday, when just about every member of Miami’s 2023 recruiting class tweeted out a picture of himself decked out in Hurricanes gear with a caption about his loyalty to Miami.
Joseph said it was the product of a conversation in the commits’ group chat.
“It’s just showing everybody that we’re still locked in. We all locked in and I hope that showed some of the other kids around the country that we’re a family,” Joseph said. “It’s just great having guys that can get in the group chat and say, ‘Let’s post some UM stuff and show the world we’re the U.’”
Joseph feels some pride in it all, not just because he grew up rooting for the Hurricanes and wants to represent Miami, but also because he helped kick off the Hurricanes’ historic recruiting summer. Joseph was only the third blue-chip prospect to pledge to Miami’s 2023 class when he orally committed in June and six more have followed him so far this summer.
Joseph is a believer in momentum as a recruiting tool and Miami still has it after vaulting all the way up to No. 9 in the team recruiting rankings for the 2023 cycle.
“It was just fun watching it fall in line. I kind of knew it was going to do that because it’s like a sphere of influence. One man do it and it all just falls—domino effect. It just all keeps going down, so we’re going to keep building the class,” Joseph said. “It put us back in high recruiting ranks and somewhere Miami hasn’t really been in a while, so it’s just great improvement all around down there. I just can’t wait until the season starts. I feel like their season’s taking forever.”
This story was originally published August 22, 2022 at 8:32 AM.
