Austin Ekeler Interview: Will The NFL Go Run Heavy Again, What Players Think Of Fantasy Football, Listener Questions, And More (Episode 875 with Adam Levitan)
Establish The Run Fantasy Football
Fantasy Football
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Former Los Angeles Chargers and current Washington Commanders Running Back Austin Ekeler joins Adam Levitan and the ETR Football podcast to answer a lot of the hottest questions around the NFL and Fantasy Football, as well as promote his 2025 Charity Fantasy Football League, where you can enter for the chance to win huge prizes like signed game-worn cleats, a championship ring and much more.
For more information on the Austin Ekeler Charity Fantasy Football League and the Austin Ekeler Foundation, hit this link: https://charitydraft.com/austin-ekeler-fantasy-football-charity-league/
In this episode, we discuss:
- How professional Running Backs respond to "Running Backs don't matter"?
- How do players in the NFL see fantasy football?
- Would Austin let his children play football?
- Should you care about off-season depth charts?
- What does he think of the NFL's swing back to favoring the running game?
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Explaining The Run/Pass Swing
4:32 - How NFL Players See Fantasy Football
7:18 - Austin’s Charity Fantasy Football League
9:40 - Responding to “Running Backs don’t matter”
14:33 - How Injuries Are Shaping Football’s Future
16:26 - Thoughts On The Guardian Cap
17:47 - How Much Off-Season Depth Charts Correlate To Game Time
20:06 - Establishing Guaranteed Contracts in The NFL
21:56 - Listener Questions
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the official Establish the Run.com podcast. |
| 0:19.4 | My name is Adam Levittan, and today we have an actual, |
| 0:22.6 | legit, very, very special guest. You know him as fantasy's best running back in 2022 and |
| 0:31.6 | 2021. I know him as a great friend of the fantasy community and frankly the guy i want to train me in the weight room |
| 0:38.4 | it is austin eckler running back of the washington commanders austin really appreciate the time |
| 0:45.3 | how's it going that's going well thanks for the thanks for the intro i appreciate that but uh no glad to be here |
| 0:50.3 | glad to be here good all right we only have 30 minutes here. No time to mess around. |
| 0:55.0 | I have to start with the question that is like burning me the most around the NFL. |
| 1:00.7 | What happened in the NFL last year in terms of run past stuff? Like I'm sure you noticed this, |
| 1:08.4 | Austin. For the first time since 2008, NFL teams averaged fewer than 33 pass attempts per game. |
| 1:14.9 | In terms of pass rate over expectation, just nine teams were on the plus side. |
| 1:18.5 | Your commanders were actually one of them, but only nine teams were on the plus side of |
| 1:22.1 | pass rate over expectation. |
| 1:23.8 | 23 ran the ball more than baseline expectation. |
| 1:26.7 | We also had 23 different running backs get 200 plus carries and 6 get 300 plus carries. |
| 1:33.1 | Now, this was not the norm for the last decade. |
| 1:37.5 | It was a very past happy league for the last decade. |
| 1:41.0 | Do you think last season was an outlier or is this like a new philosophy in the |
| 1:47.2 | NFL that you think teams are going to stick with in terms of being more run-centric? |
| 1:52.1 | Great question. I think there's there's a lot in that goes into this question because you got to |
| 1:56.9 | look at, I think, you know, I think the quarterback situation plays a big role into this. |
| 2:02.2 | And what I mean by that is kind of trending away from maybe the pocket passers as much where, |
... |
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