Unlikely Jake Bobo has Seahawks stars DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett asking him(!) for tips
Jake Bobo lined up leaning into a Seahawks staffer mimicking press coverage with a blocking pad.
Off the line, Bobo shook his shoulders to get separation from the pad. He chopped his feet: one, two and three steps. On his third stride he planted his inside, left foot, hard into the grass. He faked outside. The undrafted rookie wide receiver then took his left hand and yanked it through his defender with a get-off-me move inside. He pulled his right arm to the inside to get his shoulders squared to the arriving ball.
The staffer went flying past — and down, hard into the damp grass.
Bobo caught the pass. Then he looked back, and down, at the latest “foe” he’d just conquered. As he held the ball and jogged away, Bobo’s smile was so wide it exceeded his mouth guard. His grin went down to his chin strap.
He laughed. DK Metcalf hollered.
It was just a no-pads practice on the furthest back field of the Seahawks training facility the last week of the preseason. Yet the scene was another example of the details Bobo has mastered in his first offseason and preseason as Seattle’s most surprising and unlikely rookie.
He’s ready to play his first NFL game Sunday in the 2023 season opener for Seattle against the Los Angeles Rams at Lumen Field.
The league drafted 259 rookies this spring. Bobo wasn’t one of them. The former UCLA and Duke wide receiver signed a free-agent contract after the draft, with Seattle.
His expectations when he signed?
“None, to be honest with you,” he said.
Now, on the eve of his first NFL game, the 6-foot-4 kid with wavy hair, a constant sense of self and humor — and an infamous, 4.99-second time in the 40-yard dash — has Metcalf and Pro Bowl veteran wide receiver Tyler Lockett asking him for advice.
DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett impressed
Metcalf, the Seahawks’ $72 million wide receiver with 4.33-second speed in the 40, was all over the world this offseason. That includes in Frances for the Cannes film festival. The NFL invited him there after he shot a commercial for the league.
Carroll excused him from some of the team’s offseason practices that were voluntary, anyway, this spring.
While he was away, Metcalf stayed updated on practices by reviewing film of each day’s work.
“So, I will pull up my iPad and watch some of the competition periods of seven on seven,” Metcalf said this week. “I’m seeing this white kid getting open every play.
“I called up Tyler. I’m like, ‘who is this? Who is number 19?’”
Lockett’s response: “Oh, that’s Bobo, man. He’s a tall receiver.”
Bobo cackled when a visitor to his locker began telling him Metcalf’s recollection.
“Who is this slow, skinny, white dude out here?!” he said, repeating what he assumed Metcalf said.
“I just try to model what those two do,” Bobo said. “I watch ‘Lock’ run his one-on-one route, if I’ve got a similar route I’m going to try to run it the same he he does.”
After weeks turned into months turned into an entire preseason of Bobo getting open and catching just about everything quarterbacks Geno Smith and Drew Lock threw near him, regardless of who was defending, Metcalf and Lockett began quizzing Bobo.
“At a position where I thought, speed kills, or speed wins everything...,” Metcalf said, with wonder in his voice.
“He practices hard harder than me. Like, he’s more detailed than I ever will be.
“And I use that as motivation to practice harder and make sure I’m honing into more details, because he’s doing all the little things right.
“You have to know where 19 is; that’s just what I’m going to say off the rip.”
Metcalf wasn’t done marveling about Bobo.
“Watching him I’m very curious how he gets open every time,” he said. “So, I asked him about his skip release. Or I asked him about, ‘What do you see here or what do you see there?’
“So I mean, he’s just a unique player in my opinion — who’s going to make a lot of noise.”
Bobo scoffed, then laughed, at Metcalf being wowed at how detailed he is.
“Oh, s***. I don’t know about all that,” Bobo said.
“Shoot, for him, he doesn’t have to be as detailed for as fast as he runs. Are you kidding me?
“I’m not going to run by anybody. So I’ve got to be detailed to get open.”
Nobody is kidding Bobo about his place on these Seahawks.
Lockett said that in his nine years in the league, all with the Seahawks, Bobo and Metcalf are the two veterans who most arrived as NFL-ready professionals in every aspect of receiving.
So what does Bobo do to get open with that 4.99 speed?
“We’re still trying to figure it out ourselves,” Lockett said.
“Whatever he does, it works. It is amazing to be able to see. And out of I would say all the rookies that I’ve probably seen just in the course of my career, he is probably number one (in) you would think he was a vet. The way that he approaches the game, the way he approaches coming in.”
Oh, yes, Lockett isn’t the only one who’s noticed Bobo staying after almost every practice to catch passes out of a Jugs machine, or from Lock, or from anyone.
That included one day last month in pouring rain. And that was after he’d made the team.
“Like, dude is literally one of the last ones to leave. Dude’s literally the last one to leave on the football field,” Lockett said.
“It’s literally everything that he does. He’s getting himself, right. He’s in a weight room longer than everybody else. He’s in treatment room taking care of his body. You wouldn’t think that somebody who just got out of college coming to the NFL would do nearly all the things that he’s doing, just to be able to prepare himself to be able to make the team — and now being able to play for us on Sundays.”
Cut-day drama
Bobo’s performances in training camp and in three preseason games as one of the league’s top-producing receivers cemented his place on the team.
Not that he believed that, of course.
The three days between the touchdown catch he had from Lock in Seattle’s final preseason game Aug. 26 at Green Bay and the Tuesday deadline for all NFL teams to cut rosters from 90 players to 53 felt like years to the rookie.
Bobo said they were the most excruciating hours and days of his 25 years on earth.
“That morning from, like, 8 until that 1 (p.m.) cutoff period? Sweatin’ it, boy, let me tell you.”
Family members and friends kept calling him all that cut day.
“Got an update? Got an update?” they kept asking, urgently.
“No!” Bobo replied, just as urgently. “I won’t have an update until 1 o’clock.”
Each time he phone rang that morning into afternoon, his heart raced.
Seahawks coaches don’t call the players they are keeping on the 53-man roster for the start of the regular season. On cut day, they call only the 37 guys they are cutting or putting on an injured list.
So Bobo didn’t want his phone to ring. Yet it kept ringing — with everyone but the Seahawks calling.
“There’s only bad calls. You don’t want anybody calling,” he said.
“I talked to my mom (former Dartmouth ice hockey defender Casey Hagerman) a lot,” he said. “I tried to keep myself busy.”
He watched a movie that morning, the 2013 dark comedy This is the End starring Seth Rogan and James Franco. It’s about six friends becoming trapped in a house after a series of strange catastrophes.
“That’ll keep your mind going,” he said.
An odd choice, yet one that fits Bobo’s locker-room persona with the Seahawks.
The deadline that day for roster moves and setting the initial 53-man roster was 1 p.m.
Coach Pete Carroll was holding another of his annual cut-day, 1 p.m. team meetings to commemorate and in many cases celebrate those making the active roster out of the preseason. As long as you don’t get a call from the team before then, you show up at the 1 o’clock meeting.
Without THE call, Bobo headed to the team facility around 12:30 p.m. that Tuesday. As he arrived at team headquarters, his phone was silent. So he walked into the building. He headed into the locker room. Then he entered to the players’ main meeting auditorium on the first floor.
He said he remembers telling himself in those minutes “am I supposed to be here?”
Then, it turned 1 o’clock.
The music began blaring, shaking the auditorium’s walls, as usual for one of Carroll’s Seahawks team meetings.
Carroll congratulated Bobo and the 52 others in the room.
He’d made it.
Now what?
This has been a weird week in a weird summer in a weird year for the most unlikely Seahawk.
“I was telling my parents and friends,” Bobo said, “it’s been interesting to transition from ‘What can I do to make the team?’ to now ‘What can I do to help this team?’
“One is a more selfish attitude and outlook...to now, what can I do to be a cog in this machine, and get these guys to where they want to go, to where I want to go, where this organization wants to go.”
In training camp and the preseason, his goal was to wow everyone with his work ethic, his detail, his ability to get open. Now that the Seahawks and much of the league that scouted Seattle’s preseason games know he has that, Bobo’s goals are more incremental.
Prove worthy of getting on a special-teams unit. Earn then be ready with his helmet on along the sideline for the handful of snaps, if that, wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal and coordinator Shane Waldron may give him to rest Metcalf, Lockett or rookie Jaxon Smith-Njigba after a big play Sunday against the Rams.
Judging by the start of practice Friday, Bobo hasn’t lost the spirit and joy that endeared him to teammates all spring and summer. He exaggerated high stepping through calisthenics and the warm-up lines. That smile same through his helmet again.
The kid from Belmont, Massachusetts, who thought maybe he’d extend his football life by another month or two this spring trying out for the Seahawks is an NFL wide receiver.
“So what can I do (for the team now)?” Bobo said. “Whether it’s doing something on special teams, whether it’s going in for one or two plays when guys get tired and tap their helmet, something like that.
“I’m just looking to find my position, my role on this team.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2023 at 10:43 AM with the headline "Unlikely Jake Bobo has Seahawks stars DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett asking him(!) for tips."
