It is a well-known fact that Quinn Meinerz is one of the best, if not the best, offensive guards in the league. He is a physical presence that strikes fear into the hearts of both defensive linemen and linebackers. So, it seems like it should be no surprise that PFF has him as the highest-graded run-blocker since Week 10 with a grade of 90.1.
Let’s take a look at his game against the Los Angeles Chargers and see why he is deserving of this grade, or maybe even a higher one for his play along the Denver Broncos offensive line.
Also, I know that I did a breakdown on Meinerz just a couple of weeks ago, but I love watching him so I wanted to do another one this week as well.
Quinn Meinerz only played the first half of the game before being taken to a hospital at halftime due to an irregular heartbeat. For those that don’t know, he was back in Denver by Monday and is on track to play on Saturday against the Lions.
Before leaving the game, Meinerz managed to play 32 offensive snaps for the Broncos. 21 of those were passes and the other 11 were run plays.
As usual, Meinerz was extremely clean in the pass-blocking department. Now, the Chargers aren’t necessarily known as a team that has a great interior pass rush, but their defensive lineman was next to useless when lined up against Meinerz. They tried a handful of DE/ DT stunts and some A-gap blitzes as well, but nothing got passed Meinerz. He did give up one pressure though, but even that was not an egregious one.
When it came to the run game, I have to say that this was not one of his better performances. Now, he was super clean and did a solid job up front, but he just wasn’t able to get the same amount of vertical displacement that we have grown used to this season. But while he didn’t drive people downfield as much, he did a great job with his positional blocking and securing running lanes. And, as usual, he was a menace to linebackers and didn’t miss a block at the second level.
