The Controversial Reality of NFL Contracts: Austin Ekeler Speaks Out | Austin Ekeler DSH #630

When I put the stress on myself, when I feel that pressure pushing down for myself, there's nothing else that matters besides this mission because there's nothing else that matters.

And that's the mindset I put my in.

I put myself in like the survival, like a survival mode.

Like this is, you have to make this work or there's nothing else to do.

All right, guys, we've got an NFL legend here today, Austin Eckler.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me, man.

Yeah, a new chapter.

It's exciting for you, right?

A new chapter indeed.

You know, as we go through life, you kind of get in a routine, but every once in a while there's a wrinkle, and this is one of those for me, and I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, and you're in an interesting period in the NFL with the way they're kind of treating running backs overall, right?

Yeah, well, look, here's how I've always, you know, kind of approached it.

Like, if you're making an impact, you should get paid for that impact.

I don't care what position you're playing, right?

And depending on how big that impact is made is depending on how big the check should be made, which is why we see quarterbacks, right, getting paid so much because they make a huge impact.

you know, regardless of what team they're on.

If you have a good quarterback, you give yourself a chance because they can make things happen.

Same with other guys, too.

If we have running backs that are making things happen, that are making an impact, you should be paid accordingly.

Absolutely.

I'm a Giants fan, so I didn't like the way Saquon went out, man.

Yeah.

I thought they did him dirty.

It's so tough because

you have these scenarios where you're balancing caps and you're balancing things like that.

And so there's a lot of politics and things behind the scene that you can't really...

can't really measure and you don't know what the organization wants.

Do they want to move on?

Are they not willing to come up to a certain number?

So yeah,

it is the nature of the business.

I feel that you wanted wanted to stay, though, right?

You wanted to be on one team your whole life?

I wanted to be on a team that wanted me.

And so, I think it got to the point where the Chargers wanted to go in a different direction.

And so that kind of played into my thought process of, hey, let's go find a new team that's excited to have Austin on their team.

And was that made apparent throughout the season, or was it kind of sudden?

No, I think really after this last season, it was a tough season for us.

Had a lot of high expectations and ended up, you know, falling short from those, you know, not only as a team, but just my personal goals as well.

And really wanted to, you know, I guess look for a new opportunity to, hey, let's, let's get a fresh start.

Let's become the, you know, contain, maintain the player that I've been in the past.

And I think the Chargers were looking for something to, something else with the new head coach and coming in that wasn't necessarily what I bring to the table.

And so no hard feelings, but just going to find a place where I fit in.

I feel that, man.

Are you still big on fantasy right now?

Ooh, fantasy is a huge community.

And about me, what you'll learn as we get talking is I love communities and bringing communities together.

And so fantasy is one that is already existing there and I can kind of implant myself in and that I've made an impact in in the past years.

And so it's something that I definitely embrace.

And, you know, I have my show, like I told you before, we started with Yahoo about fantasy football.

So it's not that I love like watching the picks and I got all these sleepers, but I love how fantasy brings people together.

And people that may not be a fan of my team that I'm playing on are still a fan of Austin because, hey, I'm on their team, you know, in fantasy or they put a bet on me.

You know, as long as I do well, it usually turns out all right.

But, you know, if I come up short, you know, I feel that too.

But it's part of, it's part of sports.

So I do love fantasy.

Yeah.

I feel that.

So are you allowed to have your own team?

Yeah, you can have your own team.

You just can't make money off of it.

Got it.

Like, it's like 250 bucks.

You can't make anything over that on fantasy.

There's a bunch of rules that we have to follow.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you ever get a lot of hate when you have a bad game?

What?

I mean, is that a real question?

I mean, you know, we live in the social media age where everyone's opinion can be put out there without any repercussion.

So I can say whatever I want.

So if you have a bad game or lose me money, you know, I'm getting DMs, I'm getting all this stuff.

I have my social media team filtering out just delete, delete, block.

I've probably got thousands of people blocked just to get the toxicity out.

You block them.

I don't block them.

My social media team does.

So I just get the toxicity out of my life.

I don't want to see it.

I don't want any of my fans that are supporting me to see it.

I just want good vibes.

I noticed you're really big on your fan engagement.

A lot of players aren't really in touch with their fans, but you've built a whole community, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I've done it in different ways, too, and actually kind of leads to the project that I've been building.

So when I first got into the NFL, I was from a small town and really had a lot of community support around my town.

Like after the game, they'd be on the field, you know, high-five in it, taking pictures.

You get to the pros, you really lose that because it's too big.

You can't manage all these people.

There's too many people that want, too many, you know, people that want these things, too many crazy people, you know.

And so you got to put boundaries in when you get to the NFL.

And so for me, I wanted to find ways to kind of break down some of those boundaries, but still keep it safe.

So So I started like streaming on Twitch.

I started a gaming company or a gaming company where we would combine audiences of NFL and other athletes to combine our likeness and build community relations, let them ask questions, game with us, stuff like that.

Discord channel, YouTube channel, built all that and just realized that

I'm not a creator in that sense.

Like I get burnt out.

So I've always been trying to find new ways to connect with the community, which kind of leads me to experience the project that I said I was working on.

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Nice.

And I love that you have the foresight to do these endeavors while you're still playing rather than retire and then try to figure it out.

Yeah, so a little bit of backstory on me.

I never thought I was going to be in the NFL.

I was going to school for business.

I was going to Western Colorado.

Not one person ever has gone to the NFL from that school.

It's a tiny Division II school up in the mountains.

Like 4,000 people in this town.

It's a ski and snowboard town, outdoor recreation.

I'm fly fishing and ice fishing every day up there.

Like that's what I was doing.

And for me, I took my education seriously and I took football seriously because football helped me pay for my school.

I didn't get a full ride because we're a division two, so you get partial, but you can increase your scholarship if you get like academic, all-American, all that stuff, you know, all-American.

And so I was trying as hard as I possibly could to dominate a football and dominate at my education.

And so I was able to do the football side well enough where my coach came to me one day and was like, hey, man, you have some scouts reaching out.

And that was kind of an eye-opening opportunity for me.

It was like, well, there's this new opportunity called the NFL that I might be able to tap into.

And so I say that because my entrepreneurial side has never left me, even though I went the football route.

I'm still building a lot of things off the field that continue to really fill my cup there.

Because even with football, I feel like it's almost a path that's been laid out for me.

Like you go to high school, you go to college, you go to the pros.

It's very laid out and it's, it's not necessarily something that I've built.

I've definitely had to work and build myself up to be able to have success in it, but I want to make something that impacts society that I can say that I've built from my hands, from my ideas, from my vision.

And I have that burning spark in me.

And so that's why I do all this stuff during the offseason.

I love that.

Damn, 4,000 in your college.

That's how many my high school had.

Yeah, yeah.

So my college actually had 2,500.

And so the town itself that it sat in was 4,000 strong.

Holy shit.

So I pretty much knew everybody.

So yeah, definitely a tight-knit community.

That's insane.

Half the town was in college.

Exactly, exactly.

For crazy, when college was out, it was like a ghost town.

Like, where is everybody?

You know,

humble beginnings, man.

For sure.

You were a white water rafter guy.

I was, man.

I was doing anything I could to get myself by.

And that was my first job I ever had.

So the day I graduated, I wanted to get out of the toxic relationship at home.

Like, I need to get away from this scenario.

And so I threw my hat in the air on May.

In May, my high school graduation, and I had a job lined up, which is white water rafting up in Gunnison, Colorado.

And that was going to be what held me over to pay rent for the summer.

I wanted to start training with the team.

So I was like, let me just immerse myself into this new life that I have.

And that's where that, yeah, that job started.

I've done a lot of odd jobs just to continue to get me by through college.

But I've just been a builder and a hustler, man.

Like, that's what I want to do.

I want to work and I want to go put everything into it and build it and try to make it as big of an impact with whatever I'm doing and try to impact others, not only myself, but the people around me.

I love it.

And that goes back to your work ethic, which I think is what separates you from a lot of people.

100%.

100%.

Because you see me, people are like, oh, you're kind of small.

And I've come up with a saying, you know, it's probably been said before, but like,

don't measure my stature, measure my impact.

Like, that's what you really need to measure.

Like, oh, yeah, I might be small in stature, but when you watch me on the field, when you watch me scoring touchdowns, getting yardage, you know, make an impact in the community, building weight rooms, building washers and dryers, you know, bringing people together as far as communities, like measure that.

Measure like, oh, how it is, measure how I speak, measure how I make you feel, measure all that.

That's the impact that I'm trying to make, and that's how I measure my success.

And so, for me, it's continued to put one step in front of the other and try to better myself and then make that contagious to the people around me and help us all lift us each other.

There's a saying, it's all like rising tide lifts all ships, right?

And so, like, let's me, let me build myself up, be around other people that are trying to do the same.

And guess what?

We'll make an impact that's that's felt around the around the world, dude.

I love that.

Um, you mentioned toxic relationship at home, yeah, man.

So, my mother was married to this guy who was a straight country guy.

Like, we lived out in the country.

And he was just really, really into tough love, like really hard on me.

And so I was the stepchild, right?

And he had a bunch of animals.

He built fence for a living.

And so he would be gone a long time.

Cause when I say built fence, like these are barbed wire fences.

This is not just like, oh, your neighborhood fence.

This is like, hey, we have 26 miles of barbed wire along the railroad up in Steamboat, Colorado, and Wyoming and all around.

And so like, this is months on a job.

And so during school, obviously I'm back home going to school.

Someone's got to take care of the horses and the cows and the chickens.

And I'm the oldest guy.

My mother was a school teacher.

And so I'm...

out pitching hay, breaking ice, watering horses every single day, every single night, taking care of all the animals.

Had a lot of responsibility during the summers.

It'd be sports camps and fence and building fence.

We'd live in a camper on the fence site, wake up, boom, go build fence, go to sleep, fishing that shift.

We'd go fishing at lunch, back to work, and then go to sleep, do it all over again.

So

a lot of work, work, a lot of environments where I'm either competing or getting pushed.

And when we worked, it wasn't just let's get this fence built.

Like, it was, let's get this shit done now.

Like, come, like, I want to see some pep in your step.

We're running, like, we're in jogging.

We're not, there's no walking.

You don't walk out there.

Damn.

It was intense.

It was intense.

So, I learned how to work hard, and that translated into how I kind of carried myself.

And so, even though it was not an environment that I enjoyed, I learned so many lessons from it that have helped me to this day and helped me really separate myself from a mentality standpoint that have been able to help me push and overcome odds as I've come and face barriers.

There's a balance with that tough love, I think, right?

Because there's a point where it's too much and then not enough.

Well, I was at the point where I, like I said, I graduated.

I was 17.

I left the same day.

Oh, wow.

And I'm like, my dad.

You're 17?

Well, my truck was packed at graduation.

Okay, so it's a little different.

She's like, all right, mom, like,

you know what's going on.

You know, I went out of here.

She's going through it, too.

And she, you know, thankfully divorced that guy.

But yeah,

she knew.

She knew.

She knew I was ready to get out of there and she knew kind of where I was at and she supported me through that.

She knew it wasn't her and I still love my mom to this day.

We have a great relationship, but she knew it was him and I wanted to get away from him.

And so did that.

And then, like I said, it's been one of the best things that I've ever gone through, you know.

And now I see myself growing up too.

And I want to have children.

I'm like, okay, how can I implement some of that tough love, but not make it where it's over the top, like you were saying, have that balance.

Because I do think there's

a lot of value in going through hard times and being pushed and having responsibility and not being able to make excuses.

because you know how it is with life.

Like, if to even set yourself apart, you got to work hard.

But if you want to continue to rise, like, you got to be relentless with it.

Like, I heard how many episodes you guys are doing and that the content you're doing, like, that's what you got to do.

You got to take this shit to the next level if you're trying to stand out.

You can't just be, if you're going to be mediocre, you're going to fit in with everyone else that's that's going about it, you know.

And I'm trying to continue to push and build.

And I want to build and I want to build things, like I said, that make impact.

So, very thankful for my upbringing.

Absolutely.

When I hear of shows filming one a week, I'm like, it's not enough, man.

Yeah.

Got to get those reps in.

Yeah, you got to put the reps in, man.

You gotta put the reps in, no matter what you're doing.

Absolutely.

I heard on Natasha Graziano's show, this was interesting.

So you said you don't have much forgiveness for people.

Did something dramatic happen to you growing up?

No.

I mean, the thing is, is like, I have, I have a mission and I'm trying to go this direction, right?

And if you, if you have some type of, you know, other motive or, hey, if you come across me and somehow like we get in a disagreement, like it's no tough love.

But look, I got to go this way.

I'm trying to go this way.

Like, you go do your thing I'm gonna go do my thing and I have a mission like there's there's things in life that you don't get back and one of them is time and so I can't be out here you know messing with drama I tell my my fiancé I'm like I do no drama there's no drama like we are on the same team we have to go forward we have to go this direction we're trying to build our life so that at the end of the day when we die or even before then we're gonna be like hey this I'm I'm so fulfilled right now because I'm in the space that I'm supposed to be doing and I'm doing what I want to do.

And I feel like this is what is my purpose in this life.

And so I want to stay stay in that lane.

And so if you're distracting me from that, if you're bringing toxicity or drama into that, I have no forgiveness for you.

Like I'm trying to go this way.

Like, like I got, I'm blocking them out.

I'm staying laser focused.

I heard this

phrase, Kobe.

Kobe Bryant came out and talked to us out in LA.

And he had this analogy where he's like, as a lion in the grass, you know, when you're hunting, when a lion's hunting,

there's all these distractions.

There's gnats, there's grass, but you see straight through that.

You see straight through that shit.

You're just locked on the gazelle, locked on the prize.

And for me, that's trying to make an impact in society.

And all these gnats flying around, you know, I'm not sitting around swatting them.

I'm not giving them any attention.

I'm not giving that any attention.

And so that's what I mean when I don't have much forgiveness because I'm staying laser focused on where I'm trying to go.

I love that.

In order to achieve the success you've had in the NFL, would you say you had to sacrifice a lot in your personal life?

Well, sacrifice, I guess, is perspective.

Like for someone else, they might seem like i sacrificed like my free time to do what they think is fun for me but for me i really enjoyed being locked in and really just focusing and honing in on and just keeping keeping in my lane and really focusing on one thing and trying to master that right um and so for me i guess you could say yeah i did sacrifice things based off of your perspective of oh because i didn't spend a lot of time with with you know my extended family or things like that or going to the beach as much as i could have but for me it wasn't necessarily sacrifice it was more so just where I wanted to be and where I felt most comfortable.

So,

you know,

I guess, yeah, because I guess that comes down to what do you see as real value for yourself.

Right.

You know, are you, I never sacrificed things that pulled away from the real true value that I thought.

Like, that's where I always stayed in.

So I didn't, to me, it didn't seem like really sacrificing.

Did you find a lot of your older friends and family members trying to take energy from you?

Ooh, no, no.

And I think that's what was great about me being in smaller towns and having that great community.

And I think that's why I have been doing so many different community building things is because when you get a good community around you, like you hear the stories of like people doubted me, like I didn't have anyone doubting me.

Like they were like, Austin, like, go for it, man.

Like, this is awesome.

Like, go do it.

Like, they have my back and they're pushing me forward.

And so I had, I still have that same support from that same community from both those, my high school and my college.

And,

you know, once I got into the NFL, now you start to feel some like the Chargers players or Chargers fan, not players, sorry, the Chargers fans, you know, they're a little twisted because of, oh, you were robust last year, you're washed and all this stuff.

And it's like, okay, okay.

You know, you hear a little bit more once you get a little bit more exposure.

But for my small towns, no, I loved, I loved all those people and those connections that I had.

And I think that goes back to my

phrase of like, yeah, I don't have a lot of forgiveness.

Like, I keep it, I keep it, keep it narrow, and I keep it focused on the right direction.

And then the people that are around me are also doing the same thing.

And so a lot of my friends that I grew up with, actually, one of them plays for the Cowboys right now.

We went to high school together K through 12.

One's an officer in the Army.

And so, like, we were really focused on goals and we were together.

And we were a tight-knit group that stayed and kind of did everything together.

That's important to have, I think.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's not as common as it was.

It's not easy to find, but in the smaller town, it's a little bit more common just because this is my group around.

And well, luckily, I had some really motivated individuals around me.

Right.

Did you feel a lot of pressure that first year in the NFL to perform immediately?

All of the pressure.

But it was self-imposed.

I put so much pressure on myself.

I left.

So I left my last year, my last semester of college.

I didn't finish, and I wanted to just 100% go all in on trying to take advantage of this one opportunity, which was the NFL, because I knew this wasn't just, oh, an opportunity to keep playing football.

No, this is a chance to change my entire lifestyle going forward, leave a legacy, and open myself up to a new life that I don't even know what's going to have, you know, in for me.

And so I went everything in.

Like, I even told, I called my mom during OTAs.

I was like, mom, like, I know you're excited, but let me me just call you at the end of the week like don't like just let me focus like let me i know you're excited i'm excited too but let me just focus on this let me laser focus let me lock in and not leave anything on the table i didn't want it to be something that i didn't do to cause me to fail or it's like oh i wish i would have studied more thing like no i'm over studying i'm putting so much pressure on myself because i'm from a division two school i have everything to prove and then some like i got to make sure that no there's no doubt that austin eckler showed up and he knew what he was doing and he did his job to his fullest ability now whether i have success in that i can't necessarily control like the there's some things that I can't control, but I can control my effort that I'm putting in to try to get myself to a place to give myself an opportunity for success.

And so I put so much pressure on myself.

I remember breaking down one time.

I was the only running back, but I broke down and straight up, I was just so like just filled with stress and emotion.

And I told my coach, I'm like, man, like, I'm putting everything into this.

And I'm not like moving up the depth chart or anything.

I was six string on the depth chart.

Damn.

Yeah, there are no six strings that make it in the NFL.

You don't make it in the NFL.

And so I'm stressed because I'm doing what I'm supposed to.

I'm on it.

But I started to learn kind of the politics of the NFL: where look, guys got to get their reps.

If they got money in a guy, that guy's going to get more reps, or if a coach likes someone and they're going to develop that person, that person's going to get more reps.

And so, Austin, whatever you have, you better freaking take advantage of it because it might not be much, but it's something.

Um, and that's what I had.

I remember my first huddle that I got in.

I actually had to run out of the huddle.

I was with the third stream because I threw up behind the behind the line.

People like lined up behind the kind of the play.

Uh, and I went in there, I was just so stressed, ran back out, and literally threw up because I was just so stressed about what I was doing.

So yeah, I put all the pressure on myself, but I love to live in that environment.

Like that environment, it keeps me super focused.

It keeps me, I don't get distracted.

Like when I put the stress on myself, when I feel that pressure pushing down for myself, there's nothing else that matters besides this mission.

That's everything.

And I have to go and I have to get it done because there's nothing else that matters.

And that's the mindset I put my in.

I put myself in like the survival, like a survival mode.

Like this is, you have to make this work or there's nothing else to do.

And with that,

you can go and move mountains here.

You feel like you can anyway.

And so that's where my mentality was.

And that's kind of the pressure that I put on myself and what got me.

And it still stays with me, with me.

My role has changed.

Obviously, I ended up making the team, was a special teams guy.

And then they put me on offense and I started scoring touchdowns.

I was like, oh, maybe this guy can play.

And sure enough, I know I could, but I still have that same type of burn, same type of fire, not only in football, but also off the field, too.

Is it hard to keep that same fire now that you're like the top dog?

No, no, because I never knew how far I was going to be able to take this thing.

Like, I didn't know I was going to be in the NFL.

I have a new opportunity.

This is crazy.

Let's see how far we can go.

And I think it comes back to my entrepreneurial spirit of wanting to build.

Like, I want to keep building.

And when I keep building, it means that, hey, I stay in the lane that I want to find and make an impact in, and you just keep going.

You keep trying to stack bricks as far as you can stack them.

And for me,

the spark has almost, it's almost spread now to other things, right?

When it was really laser-focused on football, now, now, okay, I've learned how to be a pro.

Now I'm a captain, you know, I'm on the executive committee for the NFL PA, you know, like so.

I'm starting to make an impact.

I'm starting to grow myself.

And so it's like, okay, how much more can I do?

What else can I do?

You know?

And so now it's coming down to, okay, now we're going to a new team.

So it's like, okay, perfect.

Now let me try to bring that same energy and start over on a new team and do that again.

And then off the field,

how much can I impact the community?

And how much can I really continue to grow this spark that I have in this direction of doing not only good for myself, but then spread that around to the people around me.

I love that.

Any running backs you watched a lot growing up?

I didn't watch the NFL growing up.

What?

I told you, man,

I was not thinking about the NFL at all.

So I grew up on a ranch, 80 acres out in the middle of the country, taking care of a horse.

Like if you see, I wish we could pull up like a picture on a screen, but if you see where I lived, it is just straight brown grass, flat land for miles.

My closest neighbor is a mile away.

Damn.

Like I live 26 miles from my school.

There's no one, there's no friends coming over on the weekends.

Like, no, no, I'm driving home because it takes me 30 minutes to get home after practice.

I'm not hanging out with the boys.

So I really stayed really focused.

And I grew up watching bass fishing, bull riding, and then building stuff in the backyard with pallets of wood and hunting on our land.

And so that's kind of the

lifestyle that I grew up in.

So I knew about pro sports, but we just didn't really watch it.

I grew up watching Chris Shivers.

I'm sure you don't know who that is.

I've never heard of it.

He's a professional bull rider.

Him and Ty Murray.

That's what I grew up watching.

And so that was just the environment that I was in.

Wow.

So you really were a country boy.

I was a straight up country boy.

Yeah.

Riding horses, rode bulls in my life.

So, yeah.

This is a big change for you then.

Yeah.

It has been.

It has been, obviously, being in L.A., going to a bigger city.

But I've adapted and kind of it's opened my eyes to how much.

actual possibilities and how much actually opportunity there is in this world where it's kind of it's really limited when you're in a smaller town as far as like what's available for you just because the resources aren't as you know aren't as you know available and accessible so it's it's been great for me and I love it do you have a guy you can reach out to like a mentor like Kobe was mentoring a lot of the up-and-coming NBA guys right now do you have someone like that I have a few but it depends on kind of the industry

and so I have really a go-to mentor his name is Bill Eckler he really helps me with all like my operations of like all the things that I have going on when it comes to like the workout football side like that's really just been me.

I think I've got that one covered as far as just my mentality of how I've come up and how I've applied myself.

But it really, I think also that's because I've had some mentors as I've come into my way up.

But really where I've leaned on people is in these new industries that I've started to get into.

And I really realized like as a professional, I just passed my 20-year mark of playing football.

I've been playing football for 20 years.

I could tell you pretty much everything like the back of my hand.

I know that the defensive fronts, the offensive plays, the football has not changed.

It's the same thing.

We just call it different things.

What you call fish over here, you call chicken over there.

We use weird names like that.

But for me, it's like, okay, I've been doing that.

And so when I started to branch outside of football, I realized that I didn't realize right away, but then after about five years of being in business, like there's people that have been doing business for that long as well, and they're professionals in that.

And I can't think that I can come in, which I did at first, like, oh, I'm going to go and crush it over here just because I have all this energy and I have passion.

I'm going to, you know, have throw some money at it and I'm going to build it myself.

No, you're still a rookie over here.

You're an amateur.

You're not even close to being a professional in the business space.

And so that's where I have a lot of my mentors is in the new, the new types of categories in my life that I'm trying to get into.

That's a great mindset because a lot of people crushed in one thing and then they think they can just dominate other industries.

But you realize it's not that easy.

It's definitely not.

It's just like you in the podcasting space.

If you ask me about a podcast, if I just, oh, I'm going to go start a podcast all of a sudden.

It's not that easy.

You know, it's not that easy.

You have a whole system.

You have a whole team.

You have editors.

You have people that help you set up the studio, people that get the content, people that reach out to all these people and if you're just jumping into that as an individual think you can just go and do that you're going to be you know hit with a wall of reality you know yeah there's a lot that goes into it for sure uh but you're crushing the real estate on natasha's show you said 117 properties Yeah, yeah.

And so one of my first passions before football, I had this plan.

It was like my plan A.

I was like, I'm going to go into the oil and gas industry because it was big in Colorado.

So I went to school for energy management, went into business, and then I was going to start using the capital that I was making from that, being a landman, kind of on the private side, you know, know, dealing with landowners in the business, the middleman, use that to start get into real estate and start house hacking and start getting into house flipping and then build my real estate, you know, empire slowly, but do that.

And so I was going to, that was my plan A.

And so obviously didn't happen.

Went with plan B, which came out of nowhere, was the NFL, and came into some capital.

And so allowed me to get my jump start.

So I was really knowledgeable on.

on real estate and house flipping and I was going to follow what I had this this plan to follow a house flipper and anytime he had a multifamily house I had a deal with him.

Like, hey, I'll buy it from you.

After I came into the NFL.

And so that's why I started building out in Colorado.

And then I actually ended up partnering with that guy, that house flipper, because we both wanted to scale.

And then we started a fund as well and went and bought, you know, 70, 70 houses out in

single-family homes out in Kansas City, Missouri.

And now we're looking out in Alabama right now.

So we just continue to spread.

And the...

The good scenario that we're in is the guy I'm working with, his name is Matt.

He's been flipping houses for like 20 years.

He has four crews that work for him.

So we can go and buy the things that big funds can't touch because they don't want to deal.

They want turnkey.

They want something I can just buy and just have it right now.

They don't want to deal with having to flip things up.

But we can move our crews to Missouri for three years, flip 70 homes, go to Alabama, buy 100 homes, move the crews out there.

Hey, we're flipping, be there for the next three years.

And so we can really position ourselves where we can buy these things at a really cheap cost, build them up.

put some equity into them, 1031, the bad ones that we just want to get the money out of, and keep the cash flowing deals.

so wow we're in a pretty good position that's impressive man that's a lot of units yeah yeah it's great so we continue to scale and real estate's a thing where it's interesting because our society continues to get older and houses aren't always built so it's it's one of those things where i kind of justify it as a give back in a way because we take a lot of the the stuff that people don't want to touch that's all worn down and we're flipping it over.

So we're making it actually like livable, like where it's like, this is like a shack.

There's like weeds growing everywhere.

Like no one wants to touch this thing.

Hey, let's buy it.

Let's let's flip it.

Let's actually make it something that's actually desirable for people to actually want to live in.

So it's a little give back, but also an investment for myself as well.

Absolutely.

I saw you playing in Blake Wynn.

Shout out to Blake in his poker tournament.

Yeah, man.

Blake's the goat, man.

He's awesome.

He's been kind of my inspiration out here in Vegas, too, during the offseason.

I have an office.

We share the same office building now.

And we go back and forth all the time to each other's houses, poker nights, things like that.

And I've introduced him to my version of poker.

So I started playing when I was like 13.

And we just play with like, you know, five cents, quarters you know ten cent pieces with my buddies my basketball team and and football team and uh we'd play random games we'd be making up stuff and so some of my creativity has made it into his like what he has is called uh i forgot it's like celebrity like his celebrity um yeah he's got a poker tour yeah i think it's maybe it's just called game night um

But now he's got like in his little celebrity one that we had the other day like at the at the river Everyone has to show a card, you know for this for this round.

Yeah, things like that.

So he's been putting yeah, he's been putting little twist on it to make it interesting and bringing some great personalities in.

But I know Blake's got some good stuff going on.

Yeah, I've been playing poker with him.

Are we going to see you make a WSOP appearance anytime soon?

I don't know about that.

I don't know if I have the patience.

I love the cash games because it's like, hey, it was a couple hours.

It was fun.

It's not as serious.

tournament style, I got to sit there, I got to lock in.

And I'm like, I kind of get anxious.

I'm like, all right, it's kind of going slow.

Let me just, you know, let's go all in here.

Yeah, either that I'll start playing a little bit more reckless.

I just get bored.

I'm like, well, shit, I've been folding for the last 10 minutes, you know, for an hour.

I'm just going to, let me just play a hand.

I don't know how people do it.

The main event's 10 days.

Yeah, no way.

18 or what, 12 hours each day?

It's crazy.

Look, I have the bandwidth to lock in on some things.

Sitting there playing poker is not one of them.

Yeah.

Were you a good kid in school, like getting good grades?

I wasn't like...

the best.

My mom was a school teacher at the school that I taught at or that I was at for a little bit, not my whole career, but she moved schools.

And so I had that pressure at home just to make sure, hey, you have good grades.

And so I I was really good at math because she was a math teacher.

Yeah.

And she would help me with my homework there.

I think I had like in high school, I think I had like a 3.1.

Okay.

Decent.

So like a B student, you know, and once in a while I get an A and I want to see a C in there sometime.

But yeah, so I mean, nothing crazy.

Yeah.

But you went to college, so I did go to college.

I did go to college.

Did you graduate?

Yeah, I graduated.

So I actually went back.

So like I said, I left early.

I went back after my rookie year and ended up finishing.

Damn.

What did you major in?

I was a business major in energy management.

And so I was going into basically oil and gas, solar, like renewables, all of that stuff.

And you're just in Colorado and really on the west,

I guess, yeah, the western hemisphere

or the western side of the nation, there's like private landowners until you get to California where in Colorado, you might own the mineral rights.

Well, you don't have an oil rig to go get those mineral rights out of the ground, even though you might own them.

Maybe you do if you're really savvy with it.

But what we would do, I was Noble Energy at the time.

They got bought out, but we would approach you, but hey, we want to produce your minerals for you.

We'll give you a 20% cut on any of the revenue or any of the net profit that we make.

And we'll go put our rig on there and then produce your oil for you.

Like a licensing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you get a royalty on everything that we produce for you.

I'm all about passive income.

Yeah.

Hey, look into some mineral rights.

I know you've ever heard of this, but that's fascinating.

Oh, yeah.

You get paid a ton.

I mean, you're pumping oil out of the ground to support society.

So, I mean, these are big checks, even though it's 20%,

a ton of money in oil.

Yeah, I know a couple of people in the oil space and energy space and they make a killing because they provide energy to countries.

Oh, yeah.

It's just it's just an old industry which means it's like really tough to get into because a lot of the things keeping yeah everyone's already got you know everything's already allocated basically and now it's just these bigger companies trying to move each other around and decide who gets to produce it.

Absolutely.

Going back to football real quick who was the toughest defense you think you've ever played against?

The toughest defense.

It's so

it's such a hard question because there's so many different factors that play into it um for instance like

is there is is their defensive front good are their dbs good because and if their dbs are good that might not affect me as much because i'm i'm between the tackles is their d line really good um but san francisco two years ago like their d line and the linebackers their interior seven were insane um was that the year they went to the super bowl no or two years ago so not last year last year obviously they were in the super bowl um the year before that.

I don't know who it was.

It was Casey and...

No, it was Casey and

No, not San Fran.

It was Casey and Eagles.

That's who it was.

Eagles, okay.

Right.

That Super Bowl.

So San Fran was tough.

I mean, yeah, they still got a good front.

They lost some of the pieces now, but yeah, Fred Warner is an absolute animal

of a middle linebacker.

Damn, I wouldn't have expected that, but that makes sense.

From your point of view, as a running back, like you said, it's a little different, right?

Because as a receiver, you're not dealing with the box.

Like, you don't have to block these guys.

Like, I got to block these guys, you know, and I got to run through these guys in here.

You know, receiver, you might look at that, okay, who's got a good DB core?

So it's an interesting thing.

And people always ask me, like, who's the hardest hitting guy?

It's like, oh, I don't get hit that hard.

I'm really good at not getting hit.

I've been playing eight years and I'm a running back.

No concussions?

I mean, I've definitely had concussions, but it doesn't mean necessarily that I'm getting truck sticked out there.

It happens every once in a while, but I feel like I'm like a ball of muscle.

I can bounce and ricochet.

I got a low.

You and McCaffrey, man, you're elusive.

Yeah, I think to be a running back and to make it this far, you have to kind of get, there's like an art to getting hit and to landing, you know?

And you got to make sure you master that so that you can actually last 20 years of playing.

I've been playing 20 crazy.

I've not missed a season in 20 years.

Holy crap.

I know.

I played football every year for 20 years straight.

That's unheard of for a running back, I feel like.

Because that's what the most.

Yeah, I mean, well, not a lot of us make it to the average career for like a running back is like 2.5 years.

That's it.

Yeah,

we have the lowest

shelf life, which is reflected in our pay.

People are like, oh, it's risky.

but

there's some of us that make it through.

Did you know that stat coming into this?

No.

You just found it out?

You just play, right?

I'm not going out there thinking about injuries or anything like that.

I'm just going to play the game.

Two and a half years is crazy.

Because you're spending your whole life becoming a running back and then two years in the NFL.

Yeah.

Well, and

people in society don't really realize that because a lot of these people you've never heard of.

Well, why?

Because they only play two and a half years.

Who are these people?

You know, they're in and out.

Boom.

You know, they're staying on.

So that's why you know people like myself have been around eight years.

It's like, oh, yeah, that guy, he's been playing for the Charger for a long time.

But, you know, there's a lot of running backs that will make an appearance and maybe that the people in that space will know about it but to get the actual like kind of global recognition to get the fantasy recognition right it takes takes a little longer yeah how long did it take you to go from six on the depth chart to starting ooh three years three years yeah that was a grind oh yeah so well here's the thing so six on the depth chart make the team i beat out three other guys i'm third on the depth chart all right third string running back you're playing a lot of special teams one of my favorite stats to this day i'd never played special teams ever in my life i've never made a tackle ever in in my life, never played defense.

In my first rookie year, I led the NFL in tackles on punt.

Really?

So kind of just to tell you where my mindset was, like, you got to go get it.

This is your job.

You got to get it done.

It doesn't matter what it is.

This is your opportunity.

Go do it.

And so that was where I was at.

I'm running for my life out there.

Like, you can't touch me.

Like, I got to go tackle that guy.

I'm going to go tackle that guy.

Like, it can be hard to stop.

And that was where my mind was.

And that's how locked in I was.

And so it kind of just show what that's, that's why it's one of my favorite stats because that's what kind of solidified me is like, oh, yeah, this guy can play.

And actually,

I caught a couple balls like in the first few games,

never handed it off to me until the third game.

We were playing the Eagles, actually.

And our second stream, running back, pull his hamstring.

Austin, you got to go in.

Melvin Gordon, our start at the time, he's hurt or

he's tired.

Give him a break.

First handoff, Phillip River, handed me off 34-yard touchdown,

ripped it right down the freaking middle.

I'm just going crazy.

I don't even know how to react, man, because I didn't even know I was going to be getting the ball in the game.

I'm just screaming, flexing as as hard as I can.

And ever since then, you know, that second string, like I said, he injured his hamstring, but then I got into the game and kept making impacts, impacts, score touchdowns, impact.

And they're like, oh, shoot, like maybe this guy can play offense, too.

And so.

basically solidified myself as the second second string that year and then the next year it was really splitting with me and the starter and then the next year after that our starter actor held he held out for the first few games because he was trying to get a bigger contract and so I started for those first four games and was going popping off

touchdowns.

And then from then on, he came back eventually.

We split again.

And then they signed me back for the next four years as a starter.

I feel like that's a common thing where like the second string or third string, they're actually better than the first string sometimes.

I feel like there's, there's some.

There's some actual examples of that that have played themselves out, but it's still rare.

You know, I think like Tony Pollard would have been a good one, right?

Whereas like Zeke was there, Zeke kind of moved on and Tony Pollard kind of stepped into that role.

Now that now Tony's in a different position.

My situation with Melvin, where he was trying to get a contract, he ended up going to Denver, and then I took the role.

And so, you'll see it here and there, but it's not that common.

Okay.

Yeah, it's just glorified, I guess.

I just exactly.

There you go.

I remember the Nick Foles Eagles Super Bowl running.

I was like, that's crazy.

Those situations are highlighted because they're not as common almost, right?

So there's a lot more exposure for them.

That makes sense.

Awesome.

It's been fun, man.

Anything you want to promote or close off with?

No, I think this has just been great, man.

I appreciate you getting on here to let me share my story.

And, you know, looking forward to a new, actually, something that's kind of interesting in that running back story so the first three years when i did finally become the starter after that yeah my head coach is now my running back coach with washington wow yeah full circle it's come come back around and so the guy who who got me on the team who brought me in well he actually didn't know my name until i made the team that's how far down on the depth chart

holy crap um and so yeah came back full circle so uh i'm looking forward to meeting up with anthony lynn again and uh you know making a splash over there in washington so it's a real one man shout out to anthony yeah heck yeah man.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for watching.

As always, see you next time.