08/31/2026
Last fall, Montorie Foster Jr. was standing in front of a freshman Latin class at St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio.
He didn't know any Latin.
"So I was like, man, do y'all's homework and I will just be here watching you all," Foster said. "And it was all good from there."
Today, he made the Seattle Seahawks 53 man roster.
Here's how a substitute teacher gets there.
Foster went undrafted out of Michigan State in 2025 and signed with Seattle as a free agent. Weeks into his first training camp, he got hurt and was waived with an injury designation. He went home to Cleveland with no contract and no clear path back.
Sixteen weeks passed with nothing. He got his real estate license and started working open houses. He took the substitute teaching job at his own alma mater, walking back into the same classrooms he'd sat in as a student, working alongside teachers who'd once taught him.
He kept training the whole time anyway.
"It was tough, man," Foster said. "There were times where I wanted to give up and just get a regular job."
On December 30, the Seahawks signed him to the practice squad. He was there for the postseason run, and Seattle went on to win Super Bowl LX.
So a guy who made $13,000 in football earnings that year finished it with a championship ring.
He then did what any rational person with a Super Bowl ring and a real estate license would do. He started bringing the ring to open houses.
By his own admission, it has produced exactly zero home sales so far.
Seattle brought him back on a futures contract in February, and he spent this summer in one of the most crowded receiver rooms in football. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Cooper Kupp, Rashid Shaheed, Tory Horton, Jake Bobo. All locks. Foster was fighting for what might have been one spot, against a half dozen other candidates.
He led the team with five catches in the preseason opener against Dallas and caught Seattle's only touchdown that night. Cameras from Hard Knocks caught the whole run.
"Happy for Montorie," head coach Mike Macdonald said. "All the things he felt in camp, he felt during the game."
One more detail worth knowing. Foster played exactly one year of high school football before all of this.
A year ago he was watching kids do homework in a class he couldn't teach, wondering if football was over.
Today he's on the roster of the defending Super Bowl champions.
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