Jacob and Cody Hollister are soaring through rarefied air.

In the history of professional football, according to NFL.com, 15 sets of twins have been active NFL players simultaneously. Including practice squad players, since 1928, only one set has been on the same team. Never before has a pair of twins been members, active or inactive, of a team appearing in the Super Bowl.

Until this year.

Undrafted free agents who signed with the New England Patriots a week after the April 2017 NFL draft, Hollister twins Jacob, a tight end, and Cody, a wide receiver on the practice squad, are in Minneapolis this week in preparation for Sunday’s Super Bowl LII against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Graduates of Bend’s Mountain View High, the Hollister brothers are trail blazers of a sort in reaching the big game — but before them, others, including former players from Central Oregon, laid paths of their own.

More than 90 years ago, in 1926, the Louisville Colonels of the early NFL made an unassuming transaction by signing twins Gene (a tailback) and Tom (an offensive guard) Golsen. The brothers combined to play in four games in their lone season — the last in Colonels history.

Since the Golsens, 14 pairs of twins have been active NFL players, from Earl and Myrl Goodwin with the Pottsville Maroons in 1928 to the Pounceys — the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Maurkice and the Miami Dolphins’ Mike — of today. In between, the 2015 New Orleans Saints featured a similar setup as the 2017 Patriots. Brian Dixon signed with the Saints as an undrafted free agent in 2014, and 18 months later, New Orleans signed Brandon Dixon, Brian’s brother, to the practice squad, becoming the first set of twins to be on the same team in 87 years.

Central Oregon’s connections to the Super Bowl include some interesting coincidences.

Before the Hollisters, who graduated from Mountain View High after leading the Cougars to the program’s lone football state championship in 2011, Central Oregon boasted eight players who played in the NFL, from Bend High graduate Byron “By” Haines, whose NFL career lasted just five games in the 1937 season, to Redmond High alumnus Jed Weaver, who played with four teams between 1999 and 2004.

Three of those Central Oregonians were members of franchises that reached the Super Bowl — and two of them saw action in the big game. In 1982, Rick Gervais, a former Lava Bear, was a wrecking ball on the San Francisco 49ers’ kickoff team. A sure and hard-hitting tackler, Gervais jarred the ball loose from Cincinnati returner Archie Griffin, allowing the 49ers to take over and cash in with a second-quarter field goal en route to San Francisco’s first championship, a 26-21 victory over the Bengals in Super Bowl XVI.

Fast-forward 16 years, to 1998, a young kicker from Bend High, Ryan Longwell, was in the Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers. Longwell, who went on to become the leading scorer in Packers franchise history (but since surpassed), booted a 27-yard field goal and connected on three extra-point kicks in the Packers’ 31-24 loss to the Denver Broncos.

Now, 20 seasons later, the Hollister brothers are with the Patriots as the franchise makes its eighth trip to the Super Bowl, in search of its sixth title. Like Gervias and Longwell, Jacob and Cody are experiencing the climax of the football season during their rookie seasons as the Patriots enter a rematch of the championship game of 13 years ago, when, if you can believe it, another Central Oregon product — Weaver — was lacing up his cleats with the Patriots.

Weaver had bounced around with four different teams in six NFL seasons. A seventh-round draft pick out of Oregon, the tight end began his career with the Eagles, spending only his rookie season with the team. After three years with Miami and another with San Francisco, Weaver ended his NFL career with the Patriots during the 2004 season, helping New England march into the playoffs before the Patriots claimed a second straight title with a Super Bowl win over Philadelphia. While Weaver, who was inactive for the playoffs that year, did not get to the big game as a rookie, he did, like Gervais and Longwell before him, end his career as a Super Bowl champ — against the very team that had drafted him.

— Reporter: 541-383-0307, glucas@bendbulletin.com