WR Montorie Foster Jr. pushes to make Seahawks
Published 11:27 am Friday, August 7, 2026
He was “Mr. Foster,” teaching back home in Ohio, while the Seahawks were in Seattle winning their way to the last Super Bowl.
He was also lucky he went to the right Cleveland gym.
Last summer, exactly one year to the day Friday, Montorie Foster Jr. was a rookie free agent wide receiver the Seahawks released from their 2025 training camp. That was following his hamstring injury. He returned home to Cleveland.
Last fall, while the Seahawks were on their way to winning the NFC West, Foster was a substitute teacher at St. Edward High School in Lakewood. That’s his alma mater immediately west of Cleveland. His high school coach, the man who talked Foster into going out for the Ohio football power for his only his season in the sport, his senior year, wanted him to join his staff as a St. Ed’s assistant coach.
“Yeah, it was definitely different. I did a lot of jobs, honestly,” Foster told The News Tribune on KJR-FM radio this week. “I actually went back home and I got my real-estate license. I did that with substitute teaching at my high school. And then I was also training kids, little kids in football, too. So just a way to just give back to the game and keep myself busy while I wasn’t here in the (Seahawks) building.”
To stay in shape Foster, who turned 25 this week, trained at public gyms, Planet Fitness-types, in the Cleveland area. He was working out at one of those gyms last fall when a guy in his late 20s started chatting him up there. The guy learned Foster was a wide receiver trying to stay in shape in case an NFL team calls him again. The dude told Foster he could help him stay ready.
“It’s crazy. I actually found one of my quarterbacks in a local gym, just by luck,” Foster said. “By luck. Yeah. This guy, this random guy, he was just like, ‘Man, if you need a quarterback, I’ll throw to you.’ I thought he was just BS-ing.
“But actually we got together and we started throwing together.”
The guy was Jake Dostal. He was a quarterback for Mayfield High School in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland nine and 10 years ago.
“And, you know, that’s still my guy to this day,” Foster said.
Last December, Foster was on Christmas break from substitute teaching at St. Ed’s and putting on open houses for his clients with his new real-estate license. That’s when the luck of meeting Dostal at the local gym and all the work catching Dostal’s passes paid off. The Seahawks called him back.
They signed him to their practice squad Dec. 30, with two games left in the regular season and Seattle two wins from earning the top seed in the NFC playoffs.
Foster came back to Seattle and made $13,750 per week on the practice squad. Yes, that’s better than substitute teaching pays.
The first week of this past January, St. Edward High School in Lakewood called him, after its students returned from Christmas break. The school wanted him to teach again that week.
Foster told them he couldn’t make it. He told them he was back in the NFL, in Seattle.
Montorie Foster’s Super Bowl run
The Seahawks kept winning. They won through December. They won through January and the divisional playoffs over San Francisco then the NFC Championship over the Los Angeles Rams, both at packed, rockin’ Lumen Field.
Foster kept practicing. Into February, he ran routes to get Devon Witherspoon, Josh Jobe, Riq Woolen and others ready for the Super Bowl.
“Yeah, it definitely was different, for sure. And then you know, being on practice squad, getting to go to the games and seeing the atmosphere, it was just second to none. The ‘12s, the fans are great, man. I love them.
“And it was also a great time to just hone in on my craft and go against a lot of the top cornerbacks that were Super Bowl cornerbacks, too, as well. That was helping me sharpen my game, as well, too.”
Foster practiced all Super Bowl week, at the Seahawks’ NFC champions’ site at San Jose State University. He was on the sideline Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, California, wearing team Super Bowl 60 workout gear and watching his Seahawks dominate the New England Patriots to win the NFL championship.
“Yeah, it was pretty cool, man,” he said. “I’m truly grateful just to be in that experience. It was awesome. The festivities, the fans, everything about it. Then especially, like, the gear and stuff. I have so many like just items like sunglasses, shirt, sweaters, and everything.
“It’s just something that I would never forget.”
The Seahawks signed him to a futures contract following the Super Bowl. That’s how Foster’s in the champions’ training camp that continues Friday with the 12th practice. He’ll be in number 87 in the three preseason games trying to win a roster spot in a crowded wide-receiver room headlined by 2025 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Jaxon Smith-Njigba and 2021 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Cooper Kupp.
Foster can also thank Tom Lombardo.
From basketball late to football
Lombardo has been St. Edward High School’s head football coach since 2015. He’s won multiple Ohio Division-I (the top division) state championships.
Foster grew up on Cleveland’s east side, near John F. Kennedy High School. But he and his parents wanted him to have the opportunity for a private-school education and to play for top sports programs at St. Edward. So his father, Montorie Foster Sr., drove him 30 minutes each way to and from Lakewood so his son could attend St. Ed’s.
Montorie Jr. became a star basketball player on St. Ed’s team coached by Eric Flannery. The 5-foot-11 guard had Division-I offers to play collegiately at Akron and Eastern Kentucky. Foster still considers Eric Flannery, “Coach Flan,” and his wife like family.
Coach Lombardo knew where Foster’s locker was in school. He intercepted Foster there, and in St. Ed’s hallways, trying to convince him to come out for his football team. He hadn’t played since he was 10.
“He would come up to my locker every day since my freshman year in high school and was like, ‘Hey, man, you need to come try out football. I think you could be a stud.’
“And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I just want to play hoops, man. Those guys on the field over there, they are just too big, man. I don’t want to get hit.’”
Finally, for his senior season, Foster took coach Lombardo up on his three years of offering. He didn’t make his first high-school football start until week two of his senior season in 2019. Yet he became a second-team All-Ohio wide receiver after catching 40 passes for 634 yards and eight touchdowns.
Michigan State noticed. Though late in their recruiting process, the Spartans offered him a football scholarship. It was his only major-college football offer.
He chose that over basketball at Akron or Eastern Kentucky.
“And then I had a couple other friends that went to Michigan State, as well,” Foster said. “It was close to home. My family could come to the games. It was just a perfect scenario for me.”
The former basketball star who played only one year of high-school football because he didn’t want to get hit became a five-year letter winner playing Big Ten football at Michigan State. He led the Spartans in receptions in each of his final two college seasons.
He stayed, despite this era of massive transfers and the grass-is-always greener mentality of college football players. He stayed through Michigan State firing coach Mel Tucker and his staff, and hiring of Jonathan Smith from Oregon State in 2024.
Seahawks general manager John Schneider and coach Mike Macdonald value the relatively rare college player today who stays at his school for all his years of eligibility. Their scouts noted that about Foster when he sought to enter the NFL last year.
“I wasn’t really thinking about that next step, the NFL,” Foster says now of staying in East Lansing. “But for me, in that time, I think it was just the best move for my family. I love Michigan State to death. Like, I bleed green. I wanted to stay home and try to you know turn things around at Michigan State, and that’s what I tried to do. I put it all on the field, and that’s what I did.”
The Seahawks signed him in the spring of 2025 as an undrafted rookie free agent. A hamstring injury ended his training camp and his first Seattle go-round.
His second was so much more fruitful. His name is on the banner with all his teammates from the 2025 team that hangs in the Seahawks’ indoor practice field. It has the heading “SUPER BOWL LX CHAMPIONS.”
Foster got his Super Bowl ring in a private ceremony the Seahawks had at Boeing Field in Seattle in June.
He took it back to St. Ed’s this summer to show it off to Coach Lombardo, Coach Flan, Jake Dostal and, yes, probably those kids he hopes he isn’t teaching in high school just outside Cleveland again this fall.
Foster intends to be playing for the defending Super Bowl champions as a reserve wide receiver and via special teams this coming season instead.
“I’m just focusing on like what I can do, what I can control each and every day,” Foster said. “I want to do this consistently. I have a standard that I hold myself to.
“So every time I step on the field, I’m trying to you know, upheld that standard.”
