WHITEWATER, Wis. — Quinn Meinerz from Hartford and UW-Whitewater is expected to be selected in next month's NFL Draft. 

The offensive lineman solidified his spot on scouts' radars at the Senior Bowl after his season at UW-Whitewater was wiped out by the pandemic.

“Since the Senior Bowl, my time management skills have kind of had to increase a lot," says Meinerz. "I’ve had a lot of interviews with teams, I’m trying to stay on top of training every day and people try to reach out to me on social media, so I try to get them attention as well. So my time management has been having to increase a lot.”

Meinerz opened up about how he got to where he is.

“I made a decision about a year ago that I was going to treat this opportunity as a professional. Every phase in my life was going to be going towards my goal, which was I made sure I was getting enough sleep, I was eating the right foods and I was training harder than last time in every single training session,” he says. “As I have been doing these things, I utilized that our school went totally virtual in November. I actually flew down to Texas and was training with an offensive line coach down there to try to push the Senior Bowl. So I have been really working really hard for a really, really long time and now I am starting to get the recognition of all my hard work in the background.”

Meinerz says his path from Hartford to UW-Whitewater has prepared him for the NFL. 

“It has taught me that hard work always pays off, but you don’t know when it’s going to pay you,” he says. “I have been working really hard since high school, when I got out of there, and Whitewater, so now it’s starting to pay me a little bit four years later.”

Meinerz admits that his favorite NFL team is the New England Patriots. Ideally, he hopes to be taken on Day 2 of the NFL Draft. That would mean the second or third round. Rounds 4-7 are on Day 3.