There are moments when 3-year-old Jalyn Holmes II will sense something wrong with his father.
“I’ll be on walks with my son, it’s times where my son has come to me and ask me if I’m OK,” Jalyn Holmes told The Post. “They watch everything, though, they watch body language, they watch tone … and there’s been times where I kinda have been down. And I don’t think he knows what’s really going on: ‘Dad are you all right?’
“And that can mean everything for me in that moment.”
The depression and anxiety Jalyn Holmes has battled since long before he even knew what depression and anxiety were nearly caused him to abandon his NFL dream following his rookie season. It’s a dream that has taken him from the Vikings to the Saints and now to the Giants as a 6-foot-5, 283-pound free-agent defensive end and Leonard Williams’ backup at three-technique when he isn’t lining up with the starters in Wink Martindale’s base 3-4.
Therapy has kept the dream alive.
“I think that was a time where I felt like I genuinely wanted to retire, not want to be bothered with anything,” Holmes, 26, said. “I didn’t want to play ball. I isolated myself. Really didn’t talk as much. I feel like my confidence went down.
“The only thing that I wanted to do was be a dad. I feel like I had to be, because he was a baby. He still has to depend on me for everything. That was the only want-to that I had. Everything else … it really didn’t matter at that time.”
He is from Norfolk, Va., one of many places where it is considered a sign of weakness for macho males to show the slightest hint of vulnerability.
“The nickname for Norfolk back home is Shark City — big fish eat little fish,” Holmes said. “If you even seem weak, or if you look like you’re weak, people will prey on that, people will try to take advantage of that.
“I had a lot of friends, a lot of classmates, even teammates, either go to jail, dying — it was something every week,”
Holmes recorded 22 sacks across his last two seasons at Lake Taylor High School.
“The problems were changing, but it was the same things that caused me to I guess feel a certain way,” he said.
“I really think I’ve been dealing with it all my life, and didn’t really know what it was. I think I got a name put to it when I got to the league. It’s not something that was talked about where I was from really.”
He managed well enough at Ohio State to become a fourth-round draft choice.
“I think it was just piling up,” Holmes said. “I was a new dad, I was in a new city, had a lot of stuff coming my way. … You’re a fourth-round draft pick, you got some money in your pocket now, a lot of family members looking to you to be … anything goes wrong, they’re calling you.
“I kinda hit a breaking point of like feeling like I didn’t know what I was gonna do next with myself.”
Depression and anxiety are evil bedfellows.
“You’re kinda feeling alone,” Holmes said. “Really feeling like everything’s kinda like crashing down. Kinda creating problems that’s probably not necessarily there.”
One day his eyes were opened by a defensive teammate with the Vikings.
“He was just venting to me,” Holmes said. “He was just like, ‘Man I can’t wait to go to therapy. Right now I’m going three times a week.’ I didn’t know men went to therapy.”
Holmes, too, started seeing a therapist and still sees one who is based in Minneapolis.
“As I started talking to my therapist more about what was going on,” Holmes said, “he started putting a name [to] things, and it started to make a lot of sense.”
“I try to see [Zoom or phone] my therapist at least twice a week, especially on the off-days, or like if I’m having a day where I’m struggling, I try to get in contact with him.
“It’s something I recommend for everybody if you can do it.”
The lesson he has learned: “I have read that suppression actually leads to depression.”
He is thrilled to be reunited with his former Vikings defensive line coach Andre Patterson, and loves playing for Martindale.
“Life is good,” Jalyn Holmes says. “I’m blessed, man. I’m blessed, I’m blessed.”
Good for him.
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