For most of his childhood, 17-year-old Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) has been in foster care with different families, largely because of his mother's drug addiction, throughout Memphis, Tennessee. Every time he is placed in a new home, he runs away. His friend's father, on whose couch Mike had been sleeping, asks Burt Cotton (Ray McKinnon), the coach of Wingate Christian school, to help enroll his son and Mike. Impressed by Mike's size and athleticism, Cotton gets him admitted despite his abysmal academic record. At his new school, Michael is befriended by a boy named Sean Jr. "SJ" (Jae Head). SJ's mother Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) is a strong-minded interior designer and the wife of wealthy businessman Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw).