Jim Meyer

There is technically almost zero evidence that a man named Jim Meyer ever played for the Green Bay Packers.

He never recorded a sack or a tackle. He never forced a fumble or intercepted a pass. He never scored a touchdown.

Part of that comes with the territory: Meyer was an offensive lineman. He was bound to be a little bit on the anonymous side. But part of that is an honest reflection of his NFL career: it was short, and he didn’t make much of an impact.

The sum total of the evidence of his time with the Packers is this: two almost microscopic mentions in the official NFL game books for two inconsequential games from the 1987 season. Those game books, one for Week 4 and one for Week 5, mention Meyer as a substitution in both games. Only one of them bothers to even mention his number, 62.

That’s it. That’s all there is of Jim Meyer’s NFL career. That’s almost all that distinguishes him from another man by the name of Jim Meyer, a punter out of Arizona State whom the Packers selected with the 323rd pick of the 1985 NFL Draft. But the almost is important — remember that word for later.

The other Jim Meyer never appeared in an NFL game. But this one did, and as is often the case, his road to get there was both impressive and long. And his appearance in the NFL almost didn’t happen at all.

Meyer was a decorated defensive lineman at Illinois State, earning a letter all four of his years there along with an assortment of other achievements. He earned All-Conference honors in the Missouri Valley Conference three times, and his career achievements ultimately landed him in the Illinois State Athletics Hall of Fame.

Meyer had plenty of size at 6-foot-5 and 290 pounds, but the reality of his college career was that he didn’t have much experience against top-level competition. He landed with the Cleveland Browns in the 1986 NFL Draft, finding his football home via the 167th pick. The Cleveland Plain Dealer was quick to offer a little bit of home cooking on the selection, boasting that Meyer was “among the top 10-ranked players at that position on most scouting lists.” They didn’t cite any such lists or quote anyone who may have written one, trusting fans to take their word for it.

If Meyer was one of the 10 best tackles in that draft class, he didn’t show it. He never appeared in a game for the Browns, and after a training camp stint with the Houston Oilers, he arrived in Green Bay.

Though it would go on to be undistinguished, Meyer’s Packers career did represent something of a significant culmination: he was a Wisconsin native, and played his high school football in Brodhead, a town of about 3,000 in the south central part of the state. Even if it wasn’t quite a homecoming, Meyer was still playing for his hometown team, and as of 2026 he’s the only player from his high school to ever appear in an NFL game. That’s no small claim to fame.

Now, here comes the almost. Meyer’s two-game appearance in the NFL almost didn’t happen, and he may never have gotten the call at all except for one thing: the 1987 NFL season included a 24-day strike by the NFL Players’ Association, which started after Week 2 and lasted through Week 6 of the 1987 season. Rather than strike a deal with players or call off those games or re-work the season, NFL ownership decided to do something very strange: they canceled one week of games, then chose to play the rest of the existing schedule with replacement players.

Or, in less polite terms, scabs.

The players’ strike is almost four decades in the past and everyone had their own reason for deciding whether or not they wanted to cross the NFLPA’s picket line, so rendering too harsh a judgment on Meyer or anybody else who played in those games is probably going a bit too far. But we know this: Meyer may not have gotten into an NFL game at all but for the players’ strike. He lined up for real games that counted, one at the Vikings’ Metrodome and one at Lambeau Field.

Should those games have been played? Probably not. But they were, and Meyer was there. He made it to the field. It just took a huge amount of labor unrest to get him there.

The Packers went 1-1 in those two games and were 2-1 overall in games with replacement players. Ultimately, the strike ended, and the real Packers came back. Meyer never appeared in another NFL game, and neither did most of the rest of the replacements.

But for a career that almost didn’t happen at all, that two-game stint during one of the most significant labor moments in NFL history is quite a story to tell.