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I didn't know anything about Elliot Mealer (center) who was mentioned in the article so I had to google a little.


Saints OL Elliott Mealer overcomes family tragedy to reach NFL

METAIRIE, La. — Elliott Mealer stood in front of his locker at the Saints’ Metairie training facility Tuesday, five days before Father’s Day, and couldn’t help but recall something David Mealer always used to tell his son.

“He was like, if you don’t have good dreams, you have nightmares,” Elliott recalled. “…Who cares if it sounds crazy or who cares if people tell you you can’t do it. You might as well have a crazy dream other than the nightmares.

“That’s what I’ve always shot for and I’m living it now. I’ve been very blessed. It’s a great opportunity.”

It’s one of the good things Elliott remembers about his father, one of the memories the son carries of the man who helped push his child’s dream forward years after his tragic death.

Reaching the NFL
Mealer, 23, won’t say he thought for sure he would be drafted after his five years at the University of Michigan, but he was optimistic.

He wasn’t taken, though, and eventually found a spot with the New Orleans Saints as an undrafted rookie free agent. His attitude hasn’t changed, however, and he’s working as hard as he did at Michigan, where that ethic eventually paid off in starting all 13 games in 2012 at center.

“To me, I’ve never been really in a position to think I’m entitled to anything,” Mealer said. “I’ve always had the belief that you’ll play or you’ll start or you’ll make the team when you deserve to. That’s kind of the goal I have.”

As an undrafted rookie free agent, Mealer is a long-shot but not an impossible one. The Saints have a history of keeping them on the roster, including running backs Pierre Thomas and Travaris Cadet and safety Isa Abdul-Quddus among others.

Reaching the NFL would be the conclusion of a life-long dream, one born as a third-grader in small Stryker, Ohio and pushed along by his dad.

Mealer remembers lying on a pile of laundry when he was a third-grader, wondering aloud to his father about how he would play football if the sport wasn’t being played in Stryker. And 15 years later, he remembers exactly what his dad told him.

“My dad goes, ‘Oh, you’ll do it.’ I was just a little kid but at the time, my dad wanted me to play football,” Mealer said.

In fact, as fate would have it, the family moved a little more than 15 miles down the road closer to Wauseon, Ohio, where football was offered.

“We didn’t move just so I could play football but things work out in a way that have given me an opportunity to be here right now,” Mealer said.

The accident
The opportunity, though, almost wasn’t.

On Dec. 24, 2007 – Christmas Eve – Mealer was in a car leaving a holiday party. His father David was driving. His older brother Brock was in the front passenger seat. He was sitting in the middle in the back between his mother Shelly and his high-school sweetheart Hollis Richer.

Somewhere between the party and Wauseon, a 90-year-old man ran a stop sign. In doing so, the Mealer’s and Richer’s lives changed in an instant.

The father and Richer were thrown from the car and were pronounced dead at the crash. David Mealer was 50 and Richer was 17. Brock was paralyzed from the waist down. And Elliott tore his right rotator cuff while trying to free Brock by attempting to rip the window out.

Amazingly, the healing started soon after.

“Before I even met Brock, all the nurses and everybody on his floor at the hospital was saying, ‘This Brock Mealer guy is amazing,’ ” said Rich Rodriguez, who had just taken over as Michigan’s head coach when the accident happened.

“He had the whole floor in the palm of his hands. Here he was lying paralyzed and the doctors tell him he has a 99 percent chance he would never walk again and he has the most positive attitude you could ever imagine.”

Elliott Mealer, meanwhile, was as determined to make good on his commitment to Michigan as his brother was to walking again. He and his mother met with Rodriguez in the athletic training room on campus, the first time any of the Mealers had met the new coach.

Rodriguez, now the coach at the University of Arizona, remembers telling Mealer that even if he never played football again, he had a scholarship waiting for him at Michigan. He also remembers telling the then-high school student to take care of himself and his family and to not think about football.

That last point didn’t happen.

“I know it was always important to him, to get back 100 percent healthy and play,” Rodriguez said. “I think that was one of the things for himself, for his family and for his dad’s memory he wanted to get it done. I’m really, really proud to see him do that.”

Read the rest: Saints OL Elliott Mealer overcomes family tragedy to reach NFL | wwltv.com New Orleans

W.T. Sherman is my favorite General. After all he did order Atlanta to be burned to the ground.