Late-Round Perspectives: Austin Ekeler

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Austin Ekeler is an NFL running back who is the all-time leading rusher for Western Colorado University. He has the second most yards from scrimmage of any undrafted running back in NFL history. He's a husband, a PPR machine, and he wants to be the commissioner of fantasy football. These are his late-round perspectives.

Austin Ekeler (0:28)

Kind of crazy getting ready for football and fantasy season all coming together. You know how it goes.

JJ Zachariason (0:33)

How are you feeling after last year's injury?

Austin Ekeler (0:35)

Feeling good now. I've had enough time to recover, and my mind and the body have fully established themselves as ready to go forward now from the injury.

JJ Zachariason (0:45)

Yeah, I feel like that's got to be a big... I know they're talking about that, like Maliq Nabors coming back, and Kittle obviously had the Achilles as well. And I would imagine that... And I know they say it's a lot for running backs in particular, that the larger hurdle isn't even the physical, it's just the mental of being able to go back out there and take hits and do all that. Is that true?

Austin Ekeler (1:07)

It's part of it.

There's a lot of pieces to it. I think the biggest thing that you don't really realize when you're in it or when you're not in it is that there's two getbacks. You have to heal and then you have to get back in shape. There's two parts of it. If you weren't an athlete, you could just heal and then be fine. But then since you're an athlete, you have to also get back in shape and not just shape, but you have to get back in the top shape of your life to be able to compete at the highest level. So it's really, really particular on being able to get back as much as you can. And now that modern medicine has got as good as it is, it's expected that you can come back from it, but it's a lot easier said than done.

JJ Zachariason (1:44)

Doesn't it feel like that some of these guys are coming back faster this year than ever be? I mean, even like I'm looking at like Zach Charbonne, who yes, was put on PUP, but at the same time, like they're talking about this expedited timeline for him or even like Kittle himself, like he's playing this week and he's ready to go. Do you think that is a modern medicine type deal going on there? I don't want to say that it's blank. You know, like peptides or anything like that. But obviously, there's like a lot of stuff just going on there where we're seeing these guys get back and healthier quicker, it seems like.

Austin Ekeler (2:16)

Yeah. I think you see that just in modern medicine in general, you know, we're coming up with more and more things to help us recover faster, recover from things that maybe weren't thought to be recoverable from. Like now Achilles, if you come back from Achilles, ACL, all these like year injuries, like year ending injuries, you're expected to come back next year. So I would say that alone is a sign that our medicine has gotten so good that, yeah, nothing really can stop you from a ligament or tendon standpoint at this point.

JJ Zachariason (2:44)

Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy, man. Well, I do want to say, so I was at Radio Row last year, and we interviewed Josh Johnson, part of that commander's team last year.

And one of the things, first off, he was great because he has all the experience that he has being on all the teams that he has. And I just love the wisdom he was able to drop just based on that experience and whatnot. But one of the things that I did want to ask you real quick before we kind of dug into you with fantasy, and I want to really ask a lot of nerdy running back questions too.

So David Blau stepping up, being the OC there, he had a lot, Josh had a lot of good things to say about Blau. I'm curious about what your thoughts are. And then on top of that, one of the big things with Cliff Kingsbury's offenses, a lot of shotgun, right? I mean, they led the league in shock in the last two years by a very, very high rate. And so first off, I want to hear your thoughts on Blau if you have any. But then the other, the other thing I want to hear about is you as a running back, do you prefer playing out of shotgun, playing under center? Like what, like, like is there a, is it more comfortable for you one way or another? Obviously, I think you come from a really interesting perspective too, because of your past catching background. But I just want to kind of hear, hear what your thoughts are about that, that commander's team with David Blau.