Seahawks, NFL draft relatively few centers. They’d do well to get the unique Quinn Meinerz
Quinn Meinerz is perfect prospect for the NFL’s draft’s most peculiar position.
Meinerz is a Paul Bunyan in pads, a center from Division-III powerhouse Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Except he’s not a center.
That is, he hasn’t been one. Until now.
Meinerz (pronounced “Miners”) played guard for Wisconsin-Whitewater. He was a Division-III All-American doing that until the coronavirus pandemic canceled his school’s season last fall.
He spent the months he was supposed to be playing football in his backyard and basement in Wisconsin, practicing the foot and handwork of a center because that’s where he thinks he can play in the NFL. He posted the homemade reps on his YouTube page.
That YouTube page shows the 6-foot-3, 320-pound lineman dunking on a regulation basketball hoop.
“It’s kind of been a bucket-list thing for me,” Meinerz told NFL Network at the Senior Bowl. “I want to be able to dunk a basketball. I just kind of feel that’s one of those, like, I don’t know, feats of athleticism.”
There’s more.
Scroll through his YouTube page, Qmeinerz77, and you’ll find one of his homemade workout videos.
It screams, loudly: “Pacific Northwest!”
Each summer Meinerz goes into the woods, into Canada where his family owns a fishery. There, he goes all Paul Bunyan. His woods workout video would make a lumberjack — and a Sasquatch — swoon.
At one point Meinerz is squatting while holding what appears to be the base of a tree directly above his bearded, mini man-bun head with his arms locked and extended. He’s doing those squats while atop a boulder, next to a forested lake.
Then there’s Meinerz, in his summer, decidedly-not-REI gear firing out of his lineman stance into a tree he’s strangling with his bare hands.
Now Meinerz is high-pulling and shoulder-lifting a long, slender propane tank up some deck steps then through the woods. There he is doing leg crossovers and deep lunge steps along a wooden bridge in the lush, green woods. Then, he’s bench-pressing free weights he set up in the forest.
At times it appeared Meinerz was doing his workouts on the side of Mount Rainier.
Oh, yeah, the football ...
The word is out that Meinerz is perhaps the second-best center prospect in the 2021 NFL draft, behind far-more-big-time Alabama’s Landon Dickerson, the Rimington Award winner as college football’s best center but who’s had four major injuries. Dickerson might go in the second round this week, but he might not. He is coming off his second torn anterior cruciate ligament in a knee of his college career.
Meinerz is coming off wowing everyone with eyes and ears at the Senior Bowl.
After all the workouts in his basement, the Wisconsin-Whitewater guard showed up at the premier college all-star game for NFL scouts in January playing center. And not just playing it. Dominating it.
Personnel executives and general managers gawked as Meinerz pancaked top defensive linemen prospects like they were middle-schoolers during Senior Bowl-week practices. In one-on-one blocking drills, he spun around and pushed to the ground Patrick Jones. Jones is a consensus All-American defensive end from the University of Pittsburgh.
At the Senior Bowl, Meinerz blocked on running plays like a snow plow. He pass blocked with the strength of a center but quickness and athleticism of a receiver. All while at a position he’s never played in a game, in sport he hasn’t played a game in for two years.
He insisted on walking around that week in Mobile, Alabama, wearing his jerseys and shirts as half-shirts, like halter tops, to show off his not-exactly-washboard midriff.
That performance demanded Wisconsin-Whitewater stage a subsequent Pro Day. It was only and specifically for Meinerz. The only Football Championship Subdivision teams hosting pro days this year were Central Arkansas, North Dakota State and South Dakota State. And Wisconsin-Whitewater plays two levels below them.
More than merely intrigued, 37 scouts from all of the league’s 32 teams showed up at Meinerz’s personal Pro Day at Wisconsin-Whitewater. That crowd saw the 320-pound lumberjack performing shirtless while snow edged the turf field. He jumped 32 inches vertically, ran a 4.86-second 40-yard dash and a 7.33-second three-cone drill.
He’s an athlete who also plays center. And guard.
And has a heck of a personality.
Fittingly, he will be one of 45 prospects participating in the NFL’s draft show virtually this weekend.
But drafting a center?
Meinerz is the most unique prospect at the most unique position in the draft.
Oddly, the centers of the offense are rarely central in the Seahawks’ draft plans. Or the entire NFL’s, for that matter.
Every team knows the supreme value of having a good center. Yet every year, relatively few get drafted. That’s how specialized the position is. And college centers often become NFL guards, or tackles.
Consider: the Seahawks have drafted 45 offensive tackles in their 45-year history. Seattle selected eight of those tackles in the first round. Three of those eight first-round offensive tackles have been since Pete Carroll and John Schneider arrived to run the franchise in January 2010: Russell Okung in 2010, James Carpenter in 2011 (whom they then made a guard) and Germain Ifedi in 2016.
The Seahawks have chosen 28 guards, two in the first round. That includes Hall of Famer Steve Hutchinson, Seattle’s 11th-overall pick in 2001.
Centers? Seattle has drafted just 11 in its history. Only one center has gone to the Seahawks in the first round: Chris Spencer at 26th overall in 2005 out of Mississippi. The franchise’s next-highest-drafted center: Hall of Famer Kevin Mawae from LSU at 36th overall in round two in 1994. Max Unger went 49th overall in the second round to Seattle in 2009. Unger was a Pro Bowl and Super Bowl center for Seattle — until the Seahawks traded him to New Orleans to get tight end Jimmy Graham before the 2015 season.
Carroll and Schneider have drafted just one center in 11 years: Joey Hunt, in the sixth round at 215th overall in 2016 out of Texas Christian. He was mainly a backup at the position to Justin Britt, whom the Seahawks drafted to be a tackle then moved to guard and finally center.
Heck, Carroll and Schneider have drafted as many punters as centers for Seattle. They even traded up in 2018 to select soon-to-be All-Pro punter Michael Dickson in the fifth round.
In Seattle’s history, punters (seven) and kickers (four) are the only positions the Seahawks have drafted fewer of than centers.
They’ve even drafted more fullbacks than center, three more, and fullbacks have basically been extinct in the NFL since soon after Seattle entered the NFL an expansion team, 1976.
It’s not just the Seahawks.
Since 2010, the league has averaged 5.7 centers taken in each year’s seven-round draft.
Last year was the sixth time in the last 11 years a center got drafted in round one; Cesar Ruiz from Michigan went 24th overall to New Orleans. There were three centers taken in the entire first three rounds, and eight in the entire draft, among 255 total picks. In 2019, only three centers got drafted through the first five rounds.
The Seahawks’ starting center last season, Ethan Pocic, was the first college center selected in 2017, 58 picks into the draft late in round two. But he wasn’t a center to Carroll and Schneider. They made the LSU center a backup tackle and guard for his first three years in the league. Last season was his first NFL time back at his primary college position at center.
In 2014 a center didn’t get drafted until the 70th pick, well into round three. That was Marcus Martin from USC to the 49ers. The fifth of six centers drafted that year was was Corey Linsley by Green Bay 161st overall in fifth round. He just signed a $62.5-million free-agent contract with the Los Angeles Chargers in free agency, making him the league’s highest-paid center.
That’s the value of a quality center in the NFL.
Yet in 2013 only four centers got drafted. In 2012, just three got picked, and none until Peter Konz from Wisconsin went to Atlanta at 55th overall in round two.
The Seahawks’ first choice in this week’s draft is one spot later than that, the 56th pick in the second round Friday. That’s the result of Carroll and Schneider trading Seattle’s first- and third-round choices of 2020 to the New York Jets last summer to acquire All-Pro safety Jamal Adams.
Center needed
Center is a need position for Seattle.
The team last month re-signed Pocic and his one year of starting experience at center for one season and $3 million. They brought back exclusive-right free agent Kyle Fuller when he signed his tender offer for 2021 only. He started one game last season when Pocic was injured.
That’s it. No one is under contract at center beyond this year. The Seahawks did have had rookie guard Damien Lewis start one game at center, last November against Arizona. But that was a roster emergency when Pocic was still out with a concussion and Fuller had a sprained ankle.
Lewis, last year’s third-round pick, is Seattle’s long-term answer at right guard.
And longer term is the issue at center. Drafts often aren’t for meeting immediate needs everyone dissects for each team. It’s for three to five years from now.
For the Seahawks right now at center, it’s both.
Though history says the league won’t take more than about three in the first three rounds or about the first 100 picks, ESPN’s Jeff Legwold has five centers rated among his top 100 players in this draft.
The consensus top center for 2021 is Dickerson. He’s 6-6, 333 pounds. Legwold rates him as the 37th-best draft prospect overall in this draft. Dickerson’s also been a guard, at the start of his college career at Florida State. Some see him as a guard in the NFL.
Some teams reportedly have dropped him into the fifth round or later on their draft boards because of the two torn ACLs plus two major ankle injuries in his college career.
Creed Humphery from Oklahoma is a 6-4 1/2, 302-pound former wrestler. Oklahoma’s coaches have told reporters Humphery did not allow a sack in his final two seasons for the Sooners, who like most in the Big 12 Conference have their quarterback dropping back to pass about 249 times per game.
Josh Myers (6-5, 310 pounds) from Ohio State had toe surgery this winter. That limited his offseason workouts for scouts. He didn’t play center until 2019 when his Ohio State coaches moved him there. Some see him as slower out of his stance than NFL centers must be. That and relative inexperience at the position make him a possible day-three option to draft in rounds four through seven.
Kendrick Green, at 6-2, 305 pounds started at guard and center for the University of Illinois. That’s the versatility and athleticism Carroll loves in his offensive linemen. He and line coach Mike Solari would prefer nine guys who can play multiple spots up front, for the inevitable injuries that occur with linemen every season.
Pocic, for instance, has played center, guard and tackle in his four seasons with the team.
Seattle has seven different combinations of starting offensive linemen in 16 games last season.
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 1:47 PM.
