Ray Seals, who became notable for making it to the NFL without ever going to college, has died at the age of 59.
Seals was a star football player at Henninger High School in Syracuse, but he decided not to go to college and to start working after graduating high school in 1984 to help support his family. Seals didn’t quit playing football, however, joining a semipro team in Syracuse.
Seals played so well in semipro football that a football coach from the area began calling around to NFL teams to urge them to sign him as an undrafted free agent. The only NFL head coach who would listen was Ray Perkins of the Buccaneers, who had previously met Seals on a recruiting trip when Seals was in high school and Perkins was head coach at Alabama. Perkins agreed to give Seals a shot.
The Buccaneers ended up signing Seals in 1988, although he didn’t play at all that year. In 1989 he played as a backup in two games and in 1990 he played as a backup in eight games, but in 1991 he earned a starting job and was a starter in Tampa Bay for three years.
In 1994 Seals signed a free-agent contract with the Steelers, and he was a starter in Pittsburgh for two years, including the 1995 season when he started all 16 games in the regular season and all three games in the postseason, concluding in Super Bowl XXX, where the Steelers lost but Seals had a good game, including a sack of Troy Aikman.
In addition to that sack of Aikman, Seals is remembered for his role in the first completion — and first catch — of Brett Favre’s Green Bay Packers career: Favre threw a pass, Seals tipped it into the air, Favre caught it, and Seals tackled him behind the line of scrimmage.
After missing the entire 1996 season with an injury, Seals signed with the Panthers in 1997 and played one more season, then signed with the Bengals in 1998 but never got on the field.
Garry Acchione, Seals’ teammate from their time in Syracuse, told Syracuse.com that the people who played with him always knew he had what it took to make it to the NFL.
“We were all behind him. We were rooting for him like you couldn’t believe, to have that opportunity to make it,” Acchione said. “I never had a doubt in my mind that he was good enough to play in the NFL, I mean, we all knew it. It’s just, OK, how do you get him there? How does he get the opportunity? Because back then, I mean, he didn’t come out of college. You’re not going to just walk onto a pro team and make it.”
But that’s what Seals did, going from semipro football to a sack in the Super Bowl, completing one of the most unique stories in NFL history.
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