Steelers Get Tragic News Regarding Former Defensive End

The Pittsburgh Steelers have spent the last few months retooling for next season, navigating through free agency, and looking ahead to the NFL Draft. Pittsburgh has yet to identify a starting quarterback for 2025, adding some urgency to their plans for the coming weeks. 

However, this work came to a brief pause Saturday after the team learned some tragic news regarding one of their former players. 

Former Steelers defensive end Ray Seals has died at the age of 59, according to Syracuse.com. His cause of death has not yet been revealed. 

Seals, a nine-year pro, had one of the most unorthodox paths to the league. Becoming a star at Henninger High School in Syracuse, Seals decided not to go to college in order to support his family. 

“(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,” Seals' former coach Bob Campese told Syracuse.com. “We had some good ones. But Ray might have been at the top.”

He would find his way back to the gridiron after joining a local semipro team. Seals excelled to such an extent that he would eventually garner interest from the NFL, signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1988. 

The next three years he worked his way up the depth chart, becoming a starter in 1991. He held that post for three seasons before signing with the Steelers as a free agent in 1994. 

He would help Pittsburgh to an AFC Championship and appearance in Super Bowl XXX where they would fall to the Dallas Cowboys. Seals is also known for intercepting the first pass Brett Favre ever threw in the NFL. 

His final two seasons were spent with the Carolina Panthers and Cincinnati Bengals, though he never saw much action in those years. 

“We were all behind him. We were rooting for him like you couldn’t believe, to have that opportunity to make it,” former 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’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 he did. And for that reason, Seals' unique journey to the league will be remembered.