Ray Seals’s path to the NFL was unlikely. But the former Seipro soccer player reached the highest level of professional football.
Seals’s trip in life came to its weekend. The user of social networks Nini Marie and Syracuse.com confirmed the death of Seals. He was 59 years old.
His cause of death was not immediately released.
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The defensive liner Ray Seals of the Pittsburgh Steelers during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles in Three Rivers Stadium on December 11, 1994, in Pittsburgh. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
Seals’s football story began at Henninger High School in Syracuse, New York. Instead of making the leap to the university football ranks, Seals’s trip took him to the Semipros.
The Seals high school coach, Bob Champion, reminded the former defensive liner as a “happy Go-Thucky” person.
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“(He was) a happy, big and good heart that was a tremendous athlete, probably so good or better than any athlete who has left here, really,” said Champion, through Syracuse.com. “We had some good. But Ray could have been at the top.”
Ray Seals, former defensive linee of the Pittsburgh Steelers, during a half -weather presentation in honor of former players during a game between the Steelers and the Chicago Bears in Heinz Field on September 22, 2013 in Pittsburgh. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
Despite never playing a click in university football, Seals signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1988. In 1991, it was constantly in the initial alignment of the BUCS. He also had periods with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Carolina Panthers.
Seals was included in the Great Syracuse Hall of Fame in 2016, according to the biography provided by the Hall.
The defensive liner Ray Seals of the Pittsburgh Steelers during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles in Three Rivers Stadium on December 11, 1994, in Pittsburgh. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
Seals began playing for the Semipro Syracuse Express in 1987.
Ray Perkins, who trained in Alabama before leaving to accept the work of a chief coach with the Buccaneers, is greatly attributed to Seals the opportunity to play in the NFL.
“We were all behind him. We were supporting him as if you couldn’t believe, to have the opportunity to do so,” said former Seals’s express teammate Garry Acchione. “I never had doubts in my mind that was good enough to play in the NFL. I mean, we all knew it. It’s alone, ‘ok, how do you wear it there? How do you have the opportunity?’
“Because, at that time, I mean, he did not leave the university. You are not going to walk towards a professional team and do it.”
Seals, who played for the 1994-95 Steelers, registered a sack in the Super Bowl at the end of the 1995 season.
