Connor Hulstein’s final college move turned into the kind of season that can change a football career.
After spending four years at Princeton, the tight end headed to Marist for a graduate season in 2025 and made the most of it.
That one-year stop is now leading him to the NFL, with Hulstein accepting a New York Jets rookie minicamp invitation after the 2026 draft.
The opportunity comes after a season that put Hulstein among the most productive tight ends in FCS football.
He finished 2025 with 42 catches for 599 yards and seven touchdowns, numbers that helped him earn Second Team All-America honors from The Associated Press and Third Team All-America recognition from Pro Football Network.
He also moved on to the Gridiron Showcase in January, giving scouts another look at a player whose stock had clearly risen over the fall.
What made the year stand out even more was how quickly Hulstein made an impact after arriving in Poughkeepsie.
He did not need several seasons to grow into the offense. He stepped in for one graduate year and immediately became one of Marist’s biggest weapons, producing a record-setting season for a tight end and finishing as one of the top players at the position nationally.
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One Transfer Year Changed Everything
Hulstein’s path makes the story stronger than a simple minicamp note.
He played at Princeton from 2021 through 2024, then reunited at Marist with head coach Mike Willis, who had originally recruited him to Princeton.
That move gave Hulstein a fresh chance, and he turned it into the best football of his career. At Marist, he led all FCS tight ends in receiving yards, ranked second among FCS tight ends in touchdown receptions, and ranked fourth in total catches at the position.
He also rewrote part of Marist’s record book in the process. Hulstein set the school’s single-season tight end records for receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, and yards per catch.
For a player who had been a smaller piece of Princeton’s offense, the jump was dramatic.
During his Princeton career, he totaled 11 catches for 111 yards and three touchdowns. At Marist, one season was enough to push him into All-American status and put him on the Jets’ radar.
That jump says a lot about both his development and his fit. At 6-foot-6, Hulstein gave Marist a tall, dependable target who could work the middle of the field, finish in the red zone and create matchup problems that smaller defenders struggled to solve.
His final season was not built on hype. It was built on steady production, big moments and a role that kept growing as the year moved along.
Now the next step is with the Jets, where nothing will be handed to him.
Rookie minicamp invitations are opportunities, not guarantees, and Hulstein will need to prove quickly that his size, hands and route work can carry over against faster defenders and tighter windows. But that is also what makes the moment important.
He has already done the hard part of forcing his name into the conversation.
For Marist, the invite adds another name to the program’s growing NFL trail. For Princeton, it is another example of a former Tiger getting a shot at the next level.
For Hulstein, it is the reward for a one-year gamble that paid off exactly the way a player hopes it will.
He left Princeton, bet on one final season at Marist, turned that season into an All-American run, and now heads into a Jets minicamp with a real chance to keep the climb going.
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