Ray-Ray McCloud was at home in Tampa when the Pittsburgh Steelers called. He was at church, to be specific, enjoying fellowship with some old family friends. Much like the Sunday service, the phone call inspired him.
Before that, however?
"I was kinda hot," McCloud says.
And not because it was August.
Just a few weeks earlier, the former Clemson wide receiver had been cut by the Buffalo Bills for the second time in two years. So hearing from the Steelers, who originally eyed McCloud in the lead-up to the 2018 draft, was like a window to deliverance.
"I felt like I wasn't supposed to be home," he says. "It was more an opportunity to go work out than a job, but I knew I was gonna go take somebody's spot, go show Coach (Mike Tomlin) he should've drafted me earlier."
That he did. A few weeks later, McCloud was a surprise inclusion on Pittsburgh's 53-man roster. In an offseason with zero preseason games, the late addition beat out former trade acquisition Ryan Switzer to become the Steelers' new kick returner, then took punt return duties from All-Pro youngster Diontae Johnson to boot. Now, as Pittsburgh plows its way toward the postseason as the NFL's last undefeated team of 2020, McCloud has seen an increased role on offense, emerging as both a darling of coordinator Randy Fichtner and secondary target for quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
Halfway through the year, it's fair to say he's an X-factor for a Super Bowl contender; McCloud leads the league in yards per punt return, ranks just outside the top five in kick return yardage and has headlined a few splash plays carrying and catching the ball. But even the Steelers didn't envision this when they signed him.
"Coach T actually told me in Week 2 or Week 4, 'I didn't think you'd have enough time," McCloud says. "But if you ask anybody that's played with me -- in Buffalo, in Charlotte, ask the defensive players -- I like to push people."
At 5-foot-9 and 190 pounds, McCloud isn't physically imposing. And his numbers outside of special teams are pretty much par for the course for an ex-sixth-round pick. Make no mistake, though: He knows he's got juice.
"People told me when I was coming out, going to Buffalo, 'You gon' smoke John Brown' ... Any time I touch the ball, I want everybody to stand up, like, 'Oh Lord, what he about to do?'"
The Bills, it turns out, are as responsible for McCloud's sudden emergence as anyone. Buffalo re-signed the wideout to its practice squad during the 2019 season but cut him again this summer. Asked if he uses those departures as motivation: "Every day. Every day," he says. "I'm not even gonna sit here and lie." (He's also well aware the Steelers travel to play the Bills in Week 14: "I circled that the day I got here.")
More than anything, of course, McCloud's focus is on his current team. Back in 2018, he was convinced either the Jets or Steelers were going to draft him. He says he basically taught himself to play receiver entering the NFL and was prepared to sit behind one of the pros he studied most on YouTube: Longtime Steelers star Antonio Brown.
"God put me in the right place," McCloud says. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
He's working in one of the most promising WR rooms in the NFL alongside Johnson, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Chase Claypool. ("I had Kelvin Benjamin, Terrelle Pryor, Jeremy Kerley, mostly older vets before, but this room is very, very different because we're all playful and goofy, but we stay on each other's backs.") He's catching passes from one of the best in the game in Big Ben. ("He's a coach on the field ... You feel safe when he's on the field.")
Best of all, he's 8-0, with reasonable dreams of hunting a Lombardi Trophy.
"We let the media and everybody else praise us and look at us how they wanna look at us," he says. "But that's the main goal, a Super Bowl, definitely. I think the whole team, from top to bottom, is just set up for success. We just can't get caught up in the moment."
