He Was The Bachelor. It Was The Biggest Mistake Of His Life

A staple of the NBC schedule 2002, "The Bachelor" is undoubtedly the daddy of the increasingly crowded dating show genre. And in 2021, Clayton Echard, a former college football player and medical device sales representative, signed up to become its 26th suitor. Unfortunately, the University of Missouri graduate soon discovered that baring your soul and opening up your heart to 30 bachelorettes, not to mention a worldwide audience of millions, isn't exactly a guaranteed route to happiness.

Indeed, since filming wrapped on his eventful season, Echard has been accused of everything from sexual exploitation, infidelity and fathering twins while also dealing with social media mockery, mental health issues, and the constant pressures of being in the reality TV spotlight. Here's a look at why the divisive leading man should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of using a primetime reality TV show to find love.

"Accidentally chaotic." That's how Clayton Echard described the personality he first showcased on "The Bachelorette" before graduating to "The Bachelor" and then "Perfect Match." And the former tight end admits that he now regrets revealing this 'toxic trait' to the world.

"So I feel like I go on reality television with good intentions," Echard told People at Netflix Summer Break at the Santa Monica Pier in 2025. "I mean well, [but] the outcome just doesn't end up working in the way I want it to work. But I have the best intentions." The Missouri native also admits that he perhaps lacked the emotional maturity needed when he took center stage in season 26 of the hit dating show.

However, this doesn't mean that Echard necessarily wants to conform from now on. "I don't want to be normal," he went on to add. "I want to be abnormal in the best possible way, and I'm looking for someone that matches that energy that I can wake up next to every day. They look at me and they're like, 'Let's make s*** happen today.' That's the kind of mentality I want."

Clayton Echard first started obsessing over his appearance in seventh grade, but only learned that there was a proper term for the condition — body dysmorphia — when he was at college. And although he attempted to get his negative feelings under control, his various spells on reality TV have often brought them to the forefront.

While gracing the 18th season of "The Bachelorette," Echard continually compared himself to other contestants. "These guys were entrepreneurs, very successful individuals, good-looking guys, incredibly fit bodies," he explained to People in 2022. "It was tough for me to be amongst them because I found myself — It felt like I had basically taken Instagram and put it in a room. And it was tough because I started to compare myself in that environment ..."

And although he remains glad to have brought his struggles out in the open while fronting "The Bachelor," he still found them resurfacing once his season had ended. "My dysmorphia essentially just piled on top of the other struggles I was already facing with the show and kind of having a self-identity crisis from it," he told E! News. "It made it really hard for me to just be my own happier former self prior to the whole experience."

Having had the chance to watch no fewer than 25 seasons of "The Bachelor" — and already enjoyed a taste of reality TV fame in "The Bachelorette" — you could argue that Clayton Echard was naive in thinking the only feedback he'd receive from the public would be total adulation.

Indeed, in an interview with "Bachelor Happy Hour" shortly after his season of the hit NBC show started airing, the former athlete revealed that he was hugely taken aback by the amount of online hate he'd already received. "... I started to get overwhelmed," he admitted in the wake of its first episode. "I'd be lying if I said it was all sunshine and roses. I have definitely fallen victim to reading everything, which everybody's told me, 'Stop reading all the comments,' but my thought was if I know what's out there, there's no surprises."

Unfortunately, Clayton wasn't the only Echard to feel hurt by the sheer amount of negativity expressed on the Internet. His mother, Kelly, also took all the attacks on his character extremely personally. "... [She's] really struggling with it," the University of Missouri graduate added. "And I tell her to just get off social media and she can't do it either, she's so curious."

It wasn't just in the immediate aftermath of his 2022 "The Bachelor" season that Clayton Echard struggled with. He also found it difficult to deal with the renewed scrutiny every time a new suitor followed in his footsteps.

"Every season, it's like, 'This guy's better than him,'" Echard explained to "Bachelor Happy Hour" three years after he first took center stage on the NBC show. "So my sense of self for a while kept getting rocked." The health sciences graduate then went on to admit that as a people pleaser, he'd deliberately looked for negative comments online in the hopes of discovering exactly why he rubbed certain people the wrong way.

"In my head, it was like one negative comment held the weight of 50 positive comments," explained Echard, who admitted to hating himself as much as his fiercest critics. "It got to the point where I'd see in my DMs somebody saying like, 'I think you're awesome,' and I wouldn't read the message. But then I'd see like, 'You piece of...' you know what, and I'd click on it because I was like, 'What are they saying?'" Luckily, the reality TV regular was eventually able to harness all the hate in a positive way, using such remarks as a motivating tool to help him rediscover the real Clayton Echard.

Clayton Echard incurred the wrath of "The Bachelor" fans across the nation when he failed to hand any of the two finalists a rose at the end of S26. Instead of opting for either Rachel Recchia or Gabby Windey, he decided to chase after Susie Evans, a contestant he'd previously ditched, leaving both women still in the competition, devastated.

And while promoting the finale in an interview with Glamour, Echard revealed he himself had been left disappointed by how things turned out. "I don't think anyone expected my journey to end the way that it did, including myself, nor did I want it to be that way," the Missouri native said. "Everyone will be kind of surprised. I wish it could have went any other direction, but it went the direction that it did."

"I think people are going to scratch their heads, have a lot of questions, and I will have answers when that time comes," Echard went on to add. Of course, as viewers would soon discover, this go-for-broke approach initially paid off: after much soul-searching, Evans agreed to give the former footballer a second chance. 

Just like fellow dating show contestants Chelsea Vaughn, Ivan Hall, and Demar Jackson, Clayton Echard found his experience on "The Bachelor" so difficult to deal with that he ended up seeking therapy. "Everything that I went through on the show, like, I could still be in a corner right now crying and no one would blame me," Echard explained to The Arizona Republic about his decision to seek professional help. "I had to tell myself, like, 'You have to face these hard moments. You have to address these things head-on.'"

Echard went on to reveal that the producers of the NBC show immediately connected him with a therapist once he requested. But he believes it's a sad indication of the reality TV environment that he ever needed one in the first place. "I think (producers) realized, like, how badly I needed it ... I needed it desperately. And I'm like, 'I don't like the fact that we're getting individuals to a point where they desperately need it.'"

Although Echard admits he sometimes saw those behind the scenes as "monsters" for putting him in such stressful situations, he also acknowledges how they helped him, too. In fact, on learning about his body dysmorphia following a date in which he was asked to go shirtless, the production team then ensured he could keep his shirt on for a "Baywatch"-themed group hang. "They did protect me in those aspects," he noted. 

In 2022, Clayton Echard found himself accused of cheating on his "The Bachelor" pick Susie Evans by a TikToker who was all too happy to kiss and tell. Sasha Narrang took to her platform of choice the day after she claimed to have hooked up with the ex-footballer and gave the world all the gory details.

According to Narrang, the pair met at a New York City bar before jumping into bed soon after. However, it was only once the deed was done that she learned that Echard was the attached star of an NBC dating franchise. The social media user then revealed that she messaged Echard's then-girlfriend, Susie Evans, directly to inform her of the adultery. "I was very transparent because I felt incredibly terrible," she told her followers (via Cosmopolitan). "I never wanted to be caught in the middle of this."

Of course, Echard quickly and vehemently denied Narrang's version of events, arguing on an Instagram Story that he'd been at an Arizona gym at the time of the alleged tryst. In fact, he even shared his phone's geolocation information to prove so. "People that make these false accusations should be held accountable," he wrote in a caption. "Trying to gain clout by ruining a relationship is embarrassing and extremely immature." This didn't deter Narrang, however, who continued to insist that she'd bedded the reality TV star.

Just a year after being wrongly accused of cheating on Susie Evans with a TikToker, Clayton Echard once again found his reputation coming under disrepute. On this occasion, "The Bachelor" star was targeted by a woman named Laura Owens who claimed she'd fallen pregnant with twins ... and that he was the father.

Echard admitted that he only engaged in oral sexual relations with Owens, so he couldn't possibly have impregnated her as alleged. And investigators in Arizona soon accepted his version of events, leading to several felony fraud charges. For the accuser had also tried to obtain child support with the filing of a paternity suit, which she later dropped after claiming to have suffered a miscarriage.

But investigators in Arizona discovered that Owens had fabricated everything from a pregnancy video to a sonogram while also lying under oath on several occasions. She was subsequently indicted on counts of forgery, perjury, fraudulent schemes, and tampering with physical evidence. "Justice has finally been served!!" Echard wrote in an Instagram reel. "Thank you all for your continued support in helping me seek justice. It has been a long, tiresome road, but we have reached the end point of where we hoped to be."

Clayton Echard got quite the shock when he settled down to watch the first episode of the 2022 "The Bachelorette" season starring his former dating partners Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia. The Missouri native was continually used as a punchline by those vying for their affections.

"Do I think that's what should have been shown?" he asked Kaitlyn Bristowe rhetorically on her "Off the Vine" podcast (via Daily Mail) following the premiere, going on to claim that the jokes made at his expense were essentially a form of bullying. "And so for that, I'm not the biggest fan of how that was shown, but it was and ... it's just the nature of the beast."

Despite bringing the matter into the conversation, Echard insisted that he hadn't really given the derogatory comments a second thought since. "If I start giving more power to people that have no interest in my passions and they're gonna try to just pull me off this path that I'm now on and I'm full steam ahead on, to me it's as simple as just ignore it. Let it pass because ... I'm not going to give people power that should have no power over me."

Of course, Clayton Echard is unlikely to have ever met Susie Evans had he not taken on leading man duty for the 26th season of "The Bachelor." But, it appears the pressures of the NBC dating show led to their permanent split.

After reuniting in December 2021 — Echard had famously ditched Evans before the final rose ceremony — the reality TV couple spent ten months together in the real world. But in September 2022, they shared the news that everyone had predicted in a joint statement posted on Instagram. And this time, their separation was for good.

"We know no healthy relationship comes without its struggles," the pair acknowledged. "But we've realized that we were not prepared for the external forces that hindered our ability to not only heal as individuals but also as a couple." As you'd expect, both parties went on to discuss the break-up over the following few months, with Echard revealing that he'd felt abandoned at the time and Evans describing their time together as "emotionally taxing." The latter also threw some shade while defending her ex during his paternity case, stating (via Us Weekly), "Listen, Clayton might be a lot of things, but he's not a liar."

Check out Clayton Echard's Instagram page, and alongside several unashamed thirst traps, football throwbacks, and podcast clips, you'll find a whole host of videos in which he shakes what his mama gave him. Yes, in an unlikely turn of social media events since leaving "The Bachelor" world, the reality TV regular has become a proud hip-hop dancer. Unfortunately, not everyone, including his one-time love interest Gabby Windey, appreciated his moves.

In a 2025 Instagram post, Echard revealed that although the initial response to his moves had been positive, the tone soon started to shift. "I started receiving more negative comments than positive ones. More shares than likes. And not because people were inspired but because people were sending it to their friends to laugh at me and criticize me for the way that I was moving."

Echard, who chose hip-hop dancing as he believed it to be the most challenging form, went on to state that he wouldn't let all the haters stop him from throwing down. "I ultimately want people to find their authentic self through overcoming fear ... This is my journey on how I was able to do so and hopefully it can inspire you to do the same." But the dancing drama didn't end there. 

Clayton Echard might have regretted calling out Gabby Windey, in particular, for bullying him about his dancing skills. His one-time romantic interest, who later had a brief engagement to Erich Schwer, took to TikTok to throw some accusations around. And what she claimed was far more damaging than critiquing some hip-hop moves.

"It's rich coming from a man who exploited my sexual life on TV without me knowing," Windey said, referring to their time together on the 26th season of "The Bachelor." The finalist then went on to recall how he'd told the cameras he'd been intimate with both her and fellow contestant Rachel Recchia without asking their permission to reveal that information first: "So, you humiliated us in front of each other and in front of everybody watching the TV show."

"Sure, people can infer, but nothing has been said so explicitly [until your season], and those kinds of details should come from a woman," Windey added before dismissing any talk that she's a real-life mean girl. And in the video's caption, she implored her followers not to run to Echard's DMs, concluding, "... He's not worth it ..."

Despite all the struggles he'd endured during and after his stints on "The Bachelorette" and "The Bachelor," Clayton Echard once again threw himself to the mercy of reality TV producers when he signed up for the third season of Netflix's all-star dating show "Perfect Match." However, his reputation appeared to precede him.

Indeed, while appearing on the podcast "The Viall Files," Echard claimed that the events that unfolded on the screen weren't necessarily the events that unfolded in real life. "Unfortunately, I'm not too happy with the edit," he admitted. "I'm not going to sit here and dodge responsibility, but I just thought it went differently. I thought it could have been portrayed differently."

Echard was referring to his storyline with Rachel Recchia, one of the two finalists that he snubbed on "The Bachelor" in order to win back the heart of Susie Evans. Once again, Echard expressed a romantic interest before hitting the brakes. "Ultimately, I said, 'Look, my vibe and your vibe are not matched.' Three years later, I wanted to see ... will our vibes match? I'll say this, the lifestyles that we have wouldn't match, and that was part of it."