{"id":4995,"date":"2025-04-08T02:22:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T02:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=4995"},"modified":"2025-04-08T02:22:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T02:22:20","slug":"former-steelers-player-ray-seals-who-made-it-to-the-nfl-despite-skipping-college-dead-at-59","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=4995","title":{"rendered":"Former Steelers player Ray Seals, who made it to the NFL despite skipping college, dead at 59"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ray Seals’ path to\u00a0the NFL<\/a>\u00a0was improbable. But the former semipro football player reached the highest level of professional football.<\/p>\n

Seals’ journey in life came to an end this week. Social media user\u00a0Nini Marie<\/a>\u00a0and Syracuse.com confirmed Seals’ death. He was 59.<\/p>\n

His cause of death was not immediately released.<\/p>\n

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\"defensive-lineman-ray-seals\"<\/picture><\/div>\n
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Defensive lineman Ray Seals of the Pittsburgh Steelers during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Three Rivers Stadium Dec. 11, 1994, in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Seals’ football story began at Henninger High School in Syracuse, New York. Instead of making the leap to the\u00a0college football<\/a>\u00a0ranks, Seals’ journey took him to the semipros.<\/p>\n

Seals’ high school coach, Bob Campese, remembered the former defensive lineman as a “happy-go-lucky” person.<\/p>\n

“(He was) a happy-go-lucky, big, kind-hearted guy who was a tremendous athlete, probably as good or better than any athlete that ever came out of here, really,” Campese said,\u00a0via Syracuse.com<\/a>. “We had some good ones. But Ray might have been at the top.”<\/p>\n

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Ray Seals, former defensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers, during a halftime presentation honoring former players during a game between the Steelers and Chicago Bears at Heinz Field Sept. 22, 2013, in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Despite never playing a snap in college football, Seals signed with the\u00a0Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a>\u00a0in 1988. By 1991, he was consistently in the Bucs’ starting lineup. He also had stints with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Carolina Panthers.<\/p>\n

Seals was inducted into the\u00a0Greater Syracuse Hall of Fame<\/a>\u00a0in 2016, according to the bio provided by the hall.<\/p>\n

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\"pittsburgh-ray-seals\"<\/picture><\/div>\n
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Defensive lineman Ray Seals of the Pittsburgh Steelers during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Three Rivers Stadium Dec. 11, 1994, in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Seals started playing for the semipro Syracuse Express in 1987.<\/p>\n

Ray Perkins, who coached at Alabama before leaving to accept the head coaching job with the Buccaneers, is largely credited with giving Seals a chance to play in the NFL.<\/p>\n

“We were all behind him. We were rooting for him like you couldn\u2019t believe, to have that opportunity to make it,” Seals’ former Express teammate, Garry 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\u2019s just, \u2018OK, how do you get him there? How does he get the opportunity?\u2019<\/p>\n

“Because, back then, I mean, he didn\u2019t come out of college. You\u2019re not going to just walk onto a pro team and make it.”<\/p>\n

Seals, who played for the Steelers from 1994-95, recorded a sack in the Super Bowl at the end of the 1995 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ray Seals’ path to\u00a0the NFL\u00a0was improbable. But the former semipro football player reached the highest level of professional football. Seals’ journey in life came to an end this week. Social… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[260,261],"tags":[2098,2096,564,2097],"views":424,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4999,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions\/4999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}