A look at Marcus from Squid Game The Challenge’s NFL career, and what he’s doing now

Squid Game: The Challenge is back for season two and one of the new players used to be an NFL player, Marcus Applefield aka Player 21. Here’s a look into his life, and who he played for.

The series is more tense this time around, with a new round of real-life contestants competing in a series of children’s games for a whopping $4.56 million cash prize. All of the games are the same as in Squid Game season two, which makes it even better, and there are already some standout contestants after the first lot of episodes.

One of them is Marcus, the American football player who discovered a hidden message inside the spoon packet giving him a head start in the Mingle game.

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A post shared by Marcus Applefield M.S CSCS (@_applefield)

Marcus from Squid Game The Challenge played in the NFL

The six-foot-five 29-year-old joined the Baltimore Ravens in 2019 and played for them for three years until 2021. Before that, he was a student athlete at the University of Virginia and got drafted from there.

As revealed by Spotrac, he played as an offensive tackle and got signed on a $1.75 million contract, making his average yearly salary around $586k. However, there’s no record of his stats, so it’s not clear whether he actually played for the Ravens.

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He’s retired from the NFL and now runs his own gym

After retiring from the NFL, Marcus became a police officer for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. He did a degree in Criminal Justice and Police Science, graduating in 2018, so it makes sense.

However, he left the police in 2023 to start his own gym in Florida called Prospect Performance, which focuses on training athletes and coaching for college football and the NFL. Marcus released his own planner called The Daily Grind which helps athletes set goals.

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Marcus is happily engaged and has young kids

In his personal life, Player 21 has two young kids, a son and a daughter and is in a long term relationship with his fiancé.

Marcus is one of the final 43 players in the game, and I have a feeling he’s going to do pretty well. The final episodes drop on Tuesday, 11th November.

Squid Game: The Challenge is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

Featured image by: Netflix