Steelers A to Z: Well-traveled DB Nathan Meadors seeks path to gain notice

Editor’s note: From now until the first practice of training camp at Saint Vincent College, TribLive is running through the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 90-man roster, looking at each player and assessing his outlook for the 2024 season. The breakdown will run in alphabetical order with at least two players each day between June 14 and July 25. Contract data courtesy spotrac.com.

S NATHAN MEADORS

Experience/age: 3 NFL regular-season games, 27

Contract status: $915,000 cap hit if he makes the team in 2024

The past: A three-year starter at cornerback for UCLA, Meadors was not drafted but he was playing by Week 2 of his rookie 2019 season for the Minnesota Vikings. The 5-foot-11, 194-pound Meadors combined to play 11 defensive snaps and 23 on special teams over an eight-day span but soon after returned to the practice squad. He played in the ensuing season’s Vikings opener (albeit not on defense and only via 14 special-teams plays) but has not appeared in an NFL regular-season game in the four years since. Between his release from Minnesota on Sept. 28, 2020, and his signing by the Steelers this past December, Meadors had been part of eight pro teams (seven in the NFL) over those 39 months — one, the Cleveland Browns, twice.

His lone regular-season action since Sept. 13, 2020, was not in the NFL but in the XFL. In nine games its 2023 season, Meadors had 37 tackles and two interceptions for the St. Louis Battlehawks. That earned him a training-camp invite with Cleveland (it lasted 14 days) and 13 days on the Steelers’ practice squad late last season.

Karter Schult gets some pressure late and Nate Meadors picks up the bobbled drop, housing it for a pick six pic.twitter.com/4gn0Wish1I

— Arif Hasan, but NFL ???? (@ArifHasanNFL) August 10, 2019

2024 outlook: Meadors must have shown enough over that fortnight that the Steelers deemed him worthy of an offseason roster spot. He agreed to a reserve/future deal Feb. 2 and spent organized team activities and minicamp repping as a reserve defensive back drilling often with the specialty teams.

It is in that latter area Meadors must prove his worth if he is to have any chance of sticking with the Steelers. His background is at corner, suggesting Meadors has coverage skills. But that was now six years ago. Even in the XFL, Meadors was a safety.

Of the seven players who manned the most special-teams snaps for the Steelers last season, four are no longer with the team. Three of those four are defensive backs and the other a wide receiver. That means a player of Meadors’ skillset will need to emerge for Danny Smith’s coverage and return units. Meadors would seem to be an extreme longshot to make the team, but who knows? Perhaps the NFL’s new kickoff rule will afford Meadors a showcase — after all, the format is based off of what was pioneered in the XFL. The Steelers just five years ago had a spring-league safety (Kameron Kelly) not only make their 53-man roster but start a season opener just months after playing in the defunct Alliance of American Football.