Happy Wednesday,
Austin Ekeler spent nine seasons with the Chargers and a stint with the Commanders before tearing his Achilles last year.
This week, he joins us to talk about what actually happens to an NFL player once the cameras move on: the rehab, life at 31 as a free agent, and the fantasy sports company he built himself using Claude Code while he was immobile and recovering. We also get into his bigger idea for the fantasy industry, and the gray areas players have to navigate around fantasy and gambling.
The beauty of experiencing Claude Code is something that you don't get from other things. Claude Code will build for you, but also teach you what it's doing at the same time.
How He Got Here
Week 2, 2025: Tears his Achilles, ending his year with the Commanders and putting his next contract in question at 31 years old
During recovery: Immobile and unable to do much else, immerses himself in learning to build applications with Claude Code
~5–6 months ago: Starts using the tool in earnest after a consulting group he was working with suggests turning his website into an app
Offseason: Builds Fantasy Royale, evolving it from a touchdown survivor contest he ran the year before (12,000 entrants, but web-only, clunky, no saved logins) into a full app with six different contest types and national, state, fan base, and city leaderboards. Also builds Move With Mel, an app for his wife's workout community
Today: Rehabbing, four months into fatherhood, still fielding free agency offers, and now working on a new project to professionalize the fantasy sports industry at large
The Big Idea:
Austin's pitch is simple once you hear it: fantasy sports has no version of what golf or poker have. If you win the U.S. Open or a major poker tournament, the whole industry recognizes you as legitimate, regardless of which specific event you won. You get your tour card and all the trappings of being a newly minted “professional” athlete.
But fantasy sports don’t work that way. It's massively segmented; DraftKings best ball, Circa Survivor, thousands of private leagues, and winning one of them means nothing outside of it. People are literally entering $100,000 buy-in contests in Las Vegas with spreadsheets and full-time strategies, but almost no one in the broader public has any idea that world exists.
Austin competing the Celebrity Poker tournament (2025)
Austin's answer is a "pro card”: a credential that gets awarded once you clear a skill threshold in any of several designated big contests, regardless of buy-in size, paired with a benefits package from operators like DraftKings and Circa. The goal isn't to gatekeep who can play (his current contest, Fantasy Royale itself, is free to join); it's to give an entire underground industry the recognition structure it's missing.
Whether or not "pro card" is the exact right framing, the underlying instinct is a good one: the fantasy sports industry doesn’t gain legitimacy by simply getting bigger; it needs a scoreboard.
5 Tactical Takeaways
AI is a shovel, not a treasure map. Austin's own analogy: if you hand someone a shovel with no idea what to dig for, it's useless. If you already know there's something buried in your backyard, it's the best tool you've ever used. He didn't succeed with Claude Code because he learned to code; he succeeded because he had a specific, already-validated problem (a clunky touchdown survivor site) to point it at.
Free-to-play isn't just a growth strategy. Active NFL players are capped at winning $250 worth of value from fantasy contests, and paid entry would require Austin to retire to stay eligible. By building Fantasy Royale as fully free-to-play, with only cosmetic paid features, he can build and play in his own product without crossing league or gambling lines.
One good mechanic isn't a platform. Austin's original survivor pool had 12,000 entrants but no ongoing story once you were eliminated. Nobody cares about a contest they're no longer part of. Splitting it into six contest types with layered leaderboards (national, state, fan base, city) meant almost anyone could still be "the best" at something, which is what actually keeps people engaged for a full season.
Keep consultants on a short leash. This one felt personal. Austin's blunt take after six years of using them: give consultants too broad a scope and the project drifts away from your original vision while the invoices climb. His fix is to scope them to one specific, contained task, and treat any expansion as a brand-new engagement.
Build value outside of what makes you replaceable. Austin's playing career has a shelf life that's closing fast, and he knows it. But the community and audience he's built (what he calls his "social currency") isn't tied to a roster spot, and it's the thing letting him build a company before he even knows if he'll play another season.
Why It Matters
The most interesting thing about this conversation wasn't the app; it was the timing. Austin built Fantasy Royale during the exact window most players spend just trying to get back on a field: hurt, uncertain about his next contract, and with more time than he's used to having. Instead of treating that limbo as dead time, he used it to build something that doesn't depend on whether any team signs him back.
Whether "pro cards" become a real standard in fantasy sports or not, the instinct behind it is worth sitting with: find the part of your industry that's genuinely disorganized, and be the one who organizes it. Austin's been thinking about life after football for a while now, by his own admission. This is just the first version of what that looks like.
📩 And don’t forget: Bottom of the Ninth is back this Friday with the top three stories in sports and business from the week.
See you then,
Tyler & Jake