Montorie Foster Jr. has come a long way in less than a year.
Last fall, he was a substitute teacher at his alma mater, St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio, just outside his native Cleveland. He was teaching freshmen and juniors.
Teaching them Latin.
“I don’t know any Latin. At all,” Foster said. “So I was like, ‘Man do y’all’s homework and I will just be here watching you all.’ And it was all good from there.
“No lesson plan. Not at all.”
But Montorie Foster Jr. has a plan in this Seahawks training camp. The wide receiver has been...
Excellens fuit.
You don’t have to know Latin to know Foster has indeed been excellent.
The latest example was his first NFL game. Saturday night, a little more than 12 months to the day after Seattle released him with a hamstring injury from its 2025 training camp and sent him off to substitute teaching back home in Ohio, Foster shined. Again. In the Seahawks’ first preseason game of 2026, he scored Seattle’s only points against Dallas. He caught a 5-yard touchdown pass from Drew Lock to end his team’s first offensive drive.
Foster didn’t see Lock’s TD pass until the ball was about in his stomach.
Foster was trying to shake his defender with a double move into the back, center of the end zone. Lock didn’t have time to wait. A Cowboys pass rusher was closing in on him. So Lock threw the ball while Foster still had his back to it.
Foster turned his shoulders and head back to his quarterback just in time to see Lock’s pass into his hands for the score.
“It was kind of tight coverage a little bit, and it was a tight window, too,” Foster said. “Shout out to Drew. On that plant, I knew the ball was going to be right there, so I was just ready for it.”
Lock had a reason he threw the ball before Foster was looking.
“I trust Montorie,” the veteran, backup QB said.
And why not?
Every day in training camp, Foster has made plays. Catches in traffic. Keeping his feet inbounds in tight spaces while holding onto the ball. Beating defenders with deep speed, with sharp cuts short.
He’s contributing on special teams, too. He is a potential option for special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh as a returner.
Not bad for a guy who didn’t play high school football until his final, season year at St. Edward High School in Lakewood — the school he was teaching at during last season after the Seahawks cut him.
Foster appears up to the challenge of making the 53-man roster the Super Bowl champions will set Aug. 30. That’s when the league requires cuts down from 90 players. He is competing with fourth-year veteran Jake Bobo, undrafted rookie Rashad Rochelle, incumbent Cody White, fifth-year veteran Irvin Charles and 2025 seventh-round draft choice Ricky White III for the final two wide-receiver spots.
Rochelle helped his quest Saturday. He had a 52-yard punt return weaving through Cowboys in the third quarter. Starters Ernest Jones, Rashid Shaheed and Devon Witherspoon were the first Seahawks off the sideline to congratulate Rochelle, an undrafted rookie from Indiana State. Jones slapped at him with a towel.
Rochelle had a smirk on his face as he got to the sideline. He was miffed he didn’t run past the last Cowboy for a touchdown.
“I was super excited, and kind of winded,” Rochelle said.
Of the veteran Seahawks mobbing him on the sidelines, Rochelle said: “It was electric. Those are things you dream of when you’re a little kid watching preseason games, to come out here and have my opportunity and make the most of it.”
Who best contributes on special teams may win those wide receiver spots. That’s because the top four wide receivers are set with Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Cooper Kupp, Shaheed and Tory Horton. Shaheed and Horton are the primary punt returners for the real season.
So Foster, the teacher and real-estate agent from Cleveland who played one year of high school football, needs to keep stacking days — to use coach Mike Macdonald’s pet term.
He is.
“Happy for Montorie,” Macdonald said. “All the things he felt in camp, he felt (Saturday) during the game.
George Holani gains...
...by just being available.
Injuries are piling up for Seahawks running backs. Rookie first-round pick Jadarian Price was full go in warmups, but did not play Saturday. He’s missed the last five full, contact practices with a sore upper leg.
Zach Charbonnet remains on the physically-unable-to-perform list following reconstructive knee surgery in February. Jacardia Wright injured his lower leg in a scrimmage a week and a half ago and hasn’t practiced since. Emanuel Wilson didn’t play Saturday. He injured his leg in practice last week.
But Holani played. The third-year veteran Seattle signed as a rookie free agent from Boise State in 2024 started and gained a game-high 42 yards on 12 carries.
Holani gained 16 yards on three consecutive carries into Dallas territory in the second quarters. On the third straight rush, Holani cut from the left to the right, bounced off teammate and tackle Amari Kight and made four Cowboys miss tackles on him for an all-effort, 5-yard gain.
If Price isn’t the lead running back opening night when the Seahawks host New England to kick off the NFL season Sept. 9, something went wrong between now and then.
But Holani continues to be there, dependable. And available.
Right now, that’s the most valuable trait among Seahawks running backs post-Kenneth Walker.
Tyrice Knight, preseason-game star
Macdonald singled out Tyrice Knight as Seattle’s best player on the field in the team’s otherwise drab, at-times ugly preseason opener.
He was also one of the busiest.
Thrust into becoming the starting weakside inside linebacker as a rookie two seasons ago, Knight has been the backup to Drake Thomas there last season and in this training camp. Knight lost his job after he got hurt in the Seahawks’ 2025 training camp. Thomas excelled in his place.
Saturday, with Thomas and all Seahawks starters watching in team caps and shorts from the sideline, Knight started. He was back at middle linebacker, where he played until his senior year of college football at Texas-El Paso. Knight called the plays to his teammates that defensive coordinator Aden Durde gave him through his helmet speaker from the sidelines.
That was a first for Knight. That’s Ernest Jones’ job in the regular season.
“I don’t really get to call the defense, but it felt good getting the calls, everyone lined up and everyone ready to go for every snap,” Knight said. “Everyone’s looking at me waiting for me to give the command. That gave me a good feeling (Saturday).”
Knight did that while having a game-high 10 tackles. He also broke up a pass closing hard on a Cowboys receiver on third down to end Dallas’ first possession of the game.
“For me, I’ve been having a great camp,” Knight said. “I’m trying to stack days and just let it play out like it’s supposed to play out.”
Not so stellar
Jalen Milroe
The third quarterback said last week being decisive was his key to improving.
Saturday night, he hesitated.
The team’s third-round pick last year from Alabama seemed to hold onto the ball more times than he threw on time. His most decisive throw was his first one, to Bobo in the left slot to convert a third down.
From there, he looked for receivers, and looked, and ran, before taking three sacks. On a fourth and goal from the 1, he reversed his field against pressure and took a 14-yard sack.
He had a free play in the second quarter, when a penalty flag for defensive holding in the secondary on his receiver was obvious and laying in the middle of the field. Instead of throwing it deep even into coverage hoping for a big play with no risk of an interception that would count because of the pending penalty, as coaches want and veterans QB do, Milroe held onto the ball again. He ran out of bounds.
Asked about Milroe’s decisiveness or lack of it against Dallas, Macdonald said: “There were spots. We have to see what the things that he was seeing.”
“But I think the whole thing, just let’s go take another step, you know? Was it there? Let’s encourage them to go rip it.”
Milroe entered in the second and fourth quarters for Lock. Milroe completed five of eight passes for 37 yards.
“I think every play that I have the ball in my hands, it’s all about being decisive,” Milroe reiterated Saturday night.
“I think that was the key to the whole game. Of course, this is what the preseason is for.”
He also ran five times for 36 yards. Macdonald chose to point out that after the game.
“I think some great things that Jalen did was extend plays with his legs, something that has been a point of emphasis with him,” the head coach said. “It was great to see him do that...That really helped us.”
The (backup) offensive line
It’s a mighty fine thing for Seattle’s offense and new coordinator Brian Fleury that all five starting linemen are returning off the Super Bowl-champion team for this regular season.
Because their backups have a ways to go.
The fill-ins who started on the offensive line Saturday: Josh Jones at left tackle, Mason Richman at left guard, Olu Oluwatimi at center, Christian Haynes at right guard and Bobby Hart at right tackle.
Whoa.
The Cowboys’ reserve defensive linemen often ran through and around the Seahawks’ second- and third-team blockers. That is, when Seattle’s O-linemen weren’t pulling them down.
Tackle Logan Brown committed three penalties, two for holding. Brown committed a false start with Seattle’s offensive lined up to go for a fourth and 2 with 8 1/2 minutes left.
Fifth-round pick Beau Stephens entered at right guard in the second quarter. He plowed down left on the opposite defensive tackle to clear the path for a run by Holani for a first down. But Stephens also was penalized for holding during an ugly stretch for the offensive line on a hurry-up drive to end the first half: that holding penalty, a sack of Milroe allowed by Richman and a holding penalty on tackle Brown.
On Milroe’s second snap of the game, Oluwatimi appeared to not get the ball back far enough to his quarterback who was under center to receive a direct snap. Milroe was fortunate to crawl to the ball on the ground to recover the fumble.
Milroe thought he’d run for a first down on a fourth and 2 in the second quarter. But tackle Amari Kight was penalized for holding as Milroe scrambled for the would-be first down.
Instead of a first down going into the goal line, Jason Myers missed the resulting field-goal attempt.
Coach Mike Macdonald about #Seahawks making Devon Witherspoon the NFL’s highest-paid CB today in a new 4-yr, $132M deal with $101M gtd:
— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) August 16, 2026
“Spoon is all the things. He’s a great person. He’s a great football player. He’s a great teammate. He’s a great leader.”@thenewstribunepic.twitter.com/G3T14zCiOT
Shemar Jean-Charles
The sixth-year veteran cornerback hasn’t played in an NFL game since the end of the 2024 season, with New Orleans.
His Saturday night isn’t going to help him play in 2026 for Seattle.
He allowed three pass completions, in the first half. The worst one was when Jean-Charles allowed former (briefly) Seahawks backup quarterback Sam Howell to shot-put a pass underthrown into the end zone right at Jean-Charles and Dallas rookie wide receiver Camden Brown. Jean-Charles didn’t react to the pass being short. He was still moving back deeper into the end zone. Brown just looked at the ball and caught it right in front of him for a 39-yard touchdown. That gave the Cowboys a 10-7 lead in the final minute of the first half.