Born from tough stock, ex-Patriot Jacob Hollister making push to join Seahawks’ offense
Jacob Hollister comes from tough stock.
How tough?
Legend in Bend, Ore., has it that 25 years ago his mother, Jennifer Connolly, birthed Hollister and his twin brother 98 minutes apart.
Wait, more than an hour and half between childbirths?!
The average time between natural births of twins is about 17 minutes, according to Verywell Family. My twin sister and I were born five minutes apart.
So I had to ask Hollister if 98 minutes is, in fact, accurate.
“Yeah,” he said, chuckling off the side of the Seahawks’ practice field Monday.
“My mom is pretty tough.”
Pretty tough?
That’s like saying Hollister is doing pretty OK in his first Seahawks training camp.
Russell Wilson calls Seattle’s new tight end acquired from New England this spring in an overlooked trade “quick as a cat.”
A wildcat, apparently—because coach Pete Carroll calls Hollister “feisty.”
Offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer calls Hollister a “terrific acquisition.”
Showing versatility to play all over any offensive formation, Hollister is quickly growing into one of the Seattle’s more intriguing weapons on that side of the ball, and at a position of sudden need for Seattle.
“We’re really fired up that we got Jacob,” Carroll said. “He’s different. This is a different dimension receiver at the tight-end spot.
“He’s feisty and aggressive and sticks his head in there.”
Hollister has been making a move into the Seahawks’ plans for 2019 by showing effectiveness in multiple positions. Until he was sidelined for Monday’s ninth practice of training camp by a sore groin, Hollister has been showing speed and reliable hands as an inside slot receiver, as an end tight on the line and as an outside receiver on each flank.
“The speed element is awesome,” Schottenheimer said. “Really good route-runner. A lot like Tyler (Lockett) in terms of the instincts, just the ability to get open. He has a great feel for coverages, man and zone, things like that.
“He has been a great acquisition. He really has.”
And he’s moving up the depth chart.
Returning starting tight end Ed Dickson is out with a knee injury that Carroll said Monday may require surgery. That would keep Dickson out perhaps six weeks, the coach said.
The 10th-year veteran is seven years older and $2.9 million more expensive than Hollister. The Seahawks can save $3.55 million against this season’s salary cap by cutting Dickson, if need be, though it’d be an injury settlement first if he remains out into the regular season.
Hollister is 240 pounds. He’s not going to bang around and move NFL defensive linemen much in run blocking tight in formations. Then again, the Seahawks have George Fant for that. Coaches plan on using their athletic offensive tackle and former college basketball power forward again this season as an extra, blocking tight end. Fant was effective doing that last season for the league’s top rushing offense.. That was in more of an emergency fill-in roll on running downs in 2018, after Will Dissly’s season-ending knee injury.
Hollister, Dissly and 2016 third-round pick Nick Vannett are the only currently healthy tight ends on Seattle’s 90-man roster who have caught a pass in an NFL game.
Dissly returned to full practicing last week. The former University of Washington’s defensive lineman’s impressive rookie debut ended after four games last September because of a torn patellar tendon in his knee, then surgery. Monday, Wilson fired two darts Dissly caught for touchdowns in traffic within the first four plays of an 11-on-11 red-zone scrimmage.
He’s been firing darts to Hollister all spring and summer, since about the first offseason practice after Hollister arrived in late April from the Patriots in exchange for a 2020 seventh-round draft choice.
Hollister is a Seahawk no one is talking much about now but may be plenty when the regular season begins next month.
“I like to be versatile, as a football player,” Hollister said. “It’s nice to be moved around to different positions. I’m running some slot stuff, some tight end down on the position. So I love doing it.
“I was moving a lot in New England, on some tight end-type stuff.”
Hollister played two seasons with the Patriots, winning the Super Bowl with them last season. He played in 23 games during 2017 and ‘18 for New England, catching eight passes and playing mostly on special teams.
What did he learn from Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the NFL’s current, ongoing dynasty?
“Oh, man, so many things,” Hollister said. “Just the competitiveness, just the nature over there, and then bringing that here.
“These guys are super-competitive, I can already tell. So it’s nice to be in another place where the level of expectation is really high.”
Because of all their winning—and because of DeflateGate and SpyGate and other shady acts, real or believed—the national perception south of Connecticut is that New England is the NFL’s Evil Empire. Seattle, of course, is a hotbed for such thinking. Brady rallying the Patriots and Malcolm Butler intercepting Wilson at the goal in the finals seconds of the Seahawks’ Super Bowl 49 loss still cuts into Seattle’s franchise, 4 1/2 years since that game.
“Definitely, there’s a persona that’s put off,” Hollister said.
“It’s a lot more family-oriented than a lot of people would think, from the outside. They do a great job over there. I have nothing but respect for those guys.
“Happy to be here now, though.”
His twin brother Cody, a wide receiver who played at Arkansas, was on the Patriots with Jake in 2017. The Hollister twins were undrafted rookie free agents with New England that year. Cody was on New England’s practice squad that season, while Jake, as he’s known as commonly as Jacob, played in 15 games for the Patriots.
Jacob said he was a Seahawks fan growing up, “a little bit.”
“We were mainly Oregon State, Oregon guys,” he said. “But the only professional game I ever went to was a Seahawks (game). It was pretty awesome.”
His mother and Evan Hollister, his father, divorced in 1997, four years after the twins arrived in those 98 minutes. The Hollister brothers grew up dominating Oregon high-school football for Mountain View High in Bend. Jake was the quarterback, Cody his star wide receiver. They won a state championship while connecting for 15 touchdown passes in their senior season at Mountain View.
Washington State, Eastern Washington, Idaho and Wyoming were among the college programs that recruited them. But they chose to walk on together in 2012 at Nevada for coach Chris Ault. Jake was still a quarterback then. Both he and Cody were 6 feet 3 and about 210 pounds at the time.
In December of that year, following the Hollisters’ first season redshirting in Reno, Ault announced his retirement after 41 years at Nevada. The twins left during the ensuing coaching change, after Jake’s first semester at Nevada.
They both transferred to Arizona Western College, a junior college in the blast furnace of Yuma, Ariz., the desert city on the border with California. Jake became a 230-pound tight end there as a redshirt freshman in 2013. Wyoming resumed recruiting him, and signed him to a scholarship from Arizona Western in February 2014.
He says his experience as a quarterback and in more offensive systems than the average third-year NFL veteran come in handy at tight end.
“It helps,” he said. “I think it helps, because you saw the field from completely difference perspectives.
“I kind of have a little bit of an idea of what the quarterbacks wants from me, just from a quarterback’s perspective. I think that helps out a lot.”
His current quarterback, the most important and recognizable Seahawk, has noticed Hollister.
“Oh man, he’s quick as a cat,” Wilson said after Hollister had four catches in Saturday’s mock-game scrimmage. “He’s catching the ball extremely well. He’s getting open. He’s making a lot of great plays...
“He comes in with great professionalism, great vision of the game. He gets open. He knows how to separate, got great speed.
“He’s doing a great job for us.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2019 at 7:22 AM.
