Quinn Meinerz is a believer in the endless pursuit.
He has the record collection to prove it.
When he was a Wisconsin high schooler, Meinerz liked electronic dance music.
One day he stumbled on an unfamiliar genre, related but fresh: chill synth. “Resonance” by an artist called Home, to be exact.
The song became a key that unlocked an entire universe for Meinerz.
He dug in. Made friends. Went down the rabbit hole and into years of exploration.
Years later, after he got drafted, his then-fiancé bought him a record by his favorite artist, A.L.I.S.O.N. Then he found another. Bought a turntable for his apartment.
He outfitted his living room with a “Now Playing” display so he could put the sheath above the spinning vinyl for an added visual element.
Meinerz started seeking out brightly colored records that pop as they play.
“I like the physical-ness of it,” he told The Denver Post, ever an offensive lineman. “I kind of fell into it. It unveiled this entire, just, different genre and people.”
During his second pro season, Meinerz spent $1,000 on the Home record that started it all. Now his vinyl collection numbers in the hundreds. The expansion continues. It won’t ever stop, at least not entirely.
Meinerz has experienced growth in his day job, too.
In his third year as a pro, Meinerz is increasingly recognized as one of the best young interior linemen in football. He’s a long way from the fascinating but green draft prospect out of Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater he was in 2021.
It’s a process he sees not unlike collecting records. There’s a starting point. Goals and milestones. Room to occasionally look around and recognize progress.
But true mastery? A finished project?
Such finality can hardly exist in a universe where there is always more to explore.
More to hear and see.
More to reach out and touch.
More to learn.
“I think I thrive in endless pursuit,” Meinerz said. “I’m trying to refine things every day, and that’s genuinely the goal and the mission.”
The gas giant
Meinerz recently bought a telescope.
Along with chill synth, the 25-year-old is a space fanatic.
This journey began in middle school, fostered by science classes, video games and movies.
Over this past offseason, he memorialized the love on his right arm with a series of tattoos. Among them: the Metroid ship from his favorite video game. The Galaga ship from his favorite arcade game. Asteroids. And the gas giant he homes in on when he breaks out his lens to look at the Colorado sky.
“Saturn is my favorite planet,” he said. “The fact that I can just grab my telescope and go look at Saturn is just crazy.”
There’s power in taking something that’s so far away and making it seem as though it’s right there.
Meinerz is at the point in his football career where he feels comfortable plainly stating a goal that even three years ago, when he arrived at the Senior Bowl full of doubt, may have seemed half a solar system away.
“I want to be the best guard in football,” he told The Post. “That’s my goal.”
He’s certainly on his way.
“I think he’s at the top tier,” Denver right tackle Mike McGlinchey told The Post. “I think Quinn is still just scratching the surface of what he can be and he’s already at the top of this league, in my opinion. I’ve played with a lot of guys and there’s not many that are capable of the things he’s capable of physically. Mentally he’s tough as nails. He wants it so bad, and he’s as good of a teammate as he is a player, which is really rare and special for a guy like him.”
But for as big of goals as the 6-foot-3, 340-pound Meinerz has now, and as attainable as it seems, he wasn’t ever assured of getting here.
Not by a long shot.
A football journey begins
Meinerz put together an attention-grabbing junior year at the Division III level in 2019, but his senior season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving NFL teams with more questions than answers.
First, he went to Canada to work with his dad and uncle, which led to the viral videos of his tree-trunk-squatting, propane-tank-lifting workout regimen.
In need of more formal training, too, though, he linked up with Brad Arnett at NX Level Athletics back in Wisconsin.
“I just asked him initially, ‘What’s your long-term goal?” Arnett told The Post. “And he goes, ‘I think I want to play in the NFL.’ And I said, ‘Well either you do or you don’t.’ He said, ‘I do.’ Why the hesitation? ‘I don’t know what to compare myself to; I don’t know what to do.’
“A lot of self-doubt. But it was easy for me to see him in comparison to all the other NFL linemen that have been through here.”
Arnett told Meinerz he was strong enough but needed to become more flexible in his hips, knees and ankles.
“It was just a process of breaking him down, getting things functioning better, getting stuff working together better, improving technique, getting his ass back into weight-room shape, and then starting to build on that,” Arnett said.
Later in the year, Meinerz landed a Senior Bowl invite, but it represented a big step up in competition.
“I would tell you this: I remember scouting him when he came out, and there’s nothing on his college tape that makes you say, ‘Oh, this guy is a high draft pick from this D-III school,’” said Broncos offensive line coach Zach Strief, who at that time had just been hired as an assistant by Sean Payton in New Orleans. “He was so good at the Senior Bowl and opened so many eyes. That’s very hard to do.”
Arnett was sure Philadelphia would draft Meinerz.
“(Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland) blew up my phone,” he said. “Kept calling and calling and calling.”
Instead, the Broncos snagged him late in the third round with the No. 98 pick of the 2021 draft.
A star in the making
Meinerz made his first start against Baltimore his rookie season. Week 4.
“They knew a rookie was starting so they were trying to fire bullets,” Meinerz said. “I feel like I really held my own blocking someone like Calais Campbell. He got the best of me at times, but I came away from it feeling like I can really do this thing.”
He settled in over the second half of the season, starting the final eight games under the guidance of offensive line coach Mike Munchak.
“He’ll look back on his career and say, ‘Thank God I had Munch to start,’” Strief said. “He got a really good foundation built.”
A good foundation, but then little in the way of continuity.
In his first three NFL seasons, Meinerz has played for three head coaches in three schemes. Four offensive line coaches. A revolving door of right tackles.
He entered his third season this year getting ready for the newest set of surroundings — Strief and assistant Austin King leading the room and McGlinchey to his right.
McGlinchey glowed about Meinerz from the start. He’s only been more impressed the more he’s learned.
“You think about his journey, he did it on his own,” McGlinchey said. “He figured out how to lift, how to run, how to block all by himself. And to come in here and have three straight years with three different o-line coaches, it’s unbelievable how good he’s got.”
If NFL defenders didn’t believe, they’re learning fast.
Hesitate in the hole and you might get displaced in highlight-reel fashion. Let Meinerz get his hands on you and it’s pretty much over.
You can be fast like Buffalo linebacker Terrel Bernard. You can be big like Cleveland’s run-stuffer Dalvin Tomlinson.
It doesn’t much matter these days. Meinerz has arrived. And he’s done it with de-cleating force.
“Big Quinn, he’s been throwing guys out of the club, out of the bar left and right,” quarterback Russell Wilson said.
It’s not just the fact that Meinerz can posterize somebody that NFL Network analyst Brian Baldinger appreciates, though he does share the choice cuts regularly on social media. It’s the way he does it without sacrificing the details of the job.
“He’s got tremendous power and he’s got great balance, so when he hits people he moves people. You don’t find that in every offensive lineman,” Baldinger told The Post. “Then you find a great level of consistency. Obviously, they’ve run the ball a lot and he’s controlling his man. He’s moving people, he’s creating space and taking guys off the ball. He’s using his power but he’s under control.
“A lot of guys just pop people and they have power, but they don’t bring their feet or they lose their balance or they can be thrown off their track. But that’s not Quinn right now. Quinn’s playing at a really high level.”
Meinerz has always been strong. Really strong. He always could displace people. But the key to his success, he says, is in the details. It’s having the right landmark and the correct angle and utilizing the exacting technique it takes to nail those play after play after play. Week after week after week.
“I think getting into his fits as a run blocker have been good this year,” offensive line analyst and author of the Trench Warfare newsletter Brandon Thorn said. “In terms of just lining up his targets under control and balanced. He’s not lunging into contact, he’s arriving to contact under control with his feet underneath him.
“He’s got good pad level, good leverage, and then if you do that consistently on contact, you can really unleash what you have in terms of power and strength.”
The complete player
Over his first two seasons Meinerz earned a reputation as a powerful run blocker but perhaps an average pass blocker.
Ask Strief if that’s still the case and you’ll get an earful.
“I would find it very hard to accept that he’s not currently an elite pass-protecting guard,” said Strief, who played right tackle for six seasons next to potential future Hall of Fame right guard Jahri Evans in New Orleans. “When we sit down at the end of the year and look at those numbers, understanding the whole structure of what we were trying to do on some of those, there are certainly plays. ‘I missed a hand here, I missed that.’ But his recovery ability is elite. It’s as good as I’ve ever been around. It’s Terron Armstead-ish, like, how did you get back into that position?”
Part of it is natural. When you’re a young player, the game is fast. So you focus on the things you’re already good at. If you’re constantly trying to keep up, tackling weaknesses can seem impossible.
Eventually, though, the world slows down a bit. Meinerz felt it and created his own inertia in response.
“I would agree that the past two years, if you’re looking at two bar graphs, you’re going to obviously see that the run blocking is better than the pass blocking,” he said. “This year I think I’ve closed the gap a little bit more and I think there’s some people that are still holding on to a narrative of what I’ve been previously and where I’ve been previously. I’m always going to be my toughest critic and I think I’ve been pass-protecting pretty well this year. And I think the tape and the play will always speak for itself.
“I’m not saying I’m (the greatest) or whatever, but I’m definitely saying I’m way better than I’ve ever been in pass protection.”
Unit strength
The Broncos spent big this spring in free agency to fortify their offensive line, giving McGlinchey and left guard Ben Powers a combined $81 million in guaranteed money.
The returning trio, though, has also been critical. Left tackle Garett Bolles gets more and more comfortable the further away a 2022 fractured leg gets, and he turned in one of the NFL’s best left tackle performances of the season last week against Cleveland’s Myles Garrett. Meinerz and center Lloyd Cushenberry are each playing the best football of their careers.
The result: Denver is one of just five teams ESPN currently ranks in the top 10 in the NFL in both run-block win rate (fourth) and pass-block win rate (eighth).
Throughout the Broncos’ five-game winning streak, they’ve run the ball effectively and controlled games.
The magic of any good offensive line is it becomes greater than the sum of its parts, but nobody’s having a bigger impact than Meinerz.
“What’s special is he, more than probably anybody in our building, just wants to get it all perfect,” Strief said. “And he’s relentless with it. You can just tell that, man, it means a lot to him. To a point where it’s like, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t be frustrated with that. That’s really good. You’re getting better at it.’ And yet he sees the smaller imperfection and he’s like, ‘I’ve got to get it, I’ve got to get it.’
“That’s a special combination to have a guy that’s that talented and wants to be that good. He really, genuinely does.”
He always has. Or at least he’s always been willing to see where the journey leads and push forward with so much power.
Quinn Meinerz’s football universe? It’s just starting to expand in front of him.
Another endless pursuit.
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