Cleveland Browns wide receiver and four-time pro bowler Amari Cooper had Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Chidobe Awuzie hot on his heels. Cooper attacked Awuzie with a series of maneuvers, building up an attack he hoped would break up the game. However, Awuzie had learned from Cooper during their two-and-a-half seasons as Dallas teammates. Drawing on his insider scouting report, Awuzie found his footing and countered.
Pawn on f3.
Awuzie’s move came early in the second and deciding leg of the July finals of BlitzChamps, an online chess tournament played exclusively between current and former NFL players. Cooper, using the black pieces, seemed primed to gain a quick advantage, but Awuzie used a misstep to fend off an advancing bishop. Fifteen minutes later, Awuzie had a clear advantage in time and position and Cooper retired.
“Call me Thanos!” exclaimed Awuzie, celebrating his championship he won in the best-of-three semi-finals and finals rounds.
Professional athletes tend to fill their breaks from competition with, well, more competition. Ask around at any clubhouse or pro locker room and you’ll find out who’s the best at table tennis, darts or video games. Build a little more confidence and you’ll find out who the most feared crook at cards or dominoes is. Today, however, many NFL players earn respect in the locker room on the chessboard for their tactical acumen, accumulated knowledge, and competitive spirit.
“I was pleasantly surprised by the level of chess we saw at this tournament,” said John Urschel, a mathematician and former Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman who served as an analyst for Chess.com during the BlitzChamps. “I didn’t expect to see such quality chess and chess culture. I was really impressed by the players who had a developed opening repertoire and understood ideas and structures.”
Chess’ gridiron acolytes include A-list quarterbacks (Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray and Bengals’ Joe Burrow), rising rookies (Giants pass rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux), and respected retirees (like the Cardinals, who won the great Larry Fitzgerald). And while bragging alone offers plenty of reasons to compete, athletes say the benefits go well beyond trash talk, as the games give them space for deep reflection outside of their fast-moving professions. In some cases, they believe chess helps them on the gridiron as well.
One thing they generally make clear: Despite the overuse of comparisons comparing football to chess, very little in the NFL has anything to do with the intricacies of chess strategy. “Oh, it’s a chess game!” said Urschel with mocking enthusiasm, imitating a broadcaster’s cliché. “No, no – no, it’s not. It’s something completely different.
Still, one game can inform the other.
Cooper, 28, learned the rules of chess growing up and began playing in earnest during his rookie season in the NFL in 2015, first encouraged and then repeatedly thrashed by veteran Oakland Raiders teammate Rod Streater. He then hired a chess coach, and the game became his go-to ritual—his answer to the more frequent video game marathon—and a boon to his Sunday focus.
“There’s a huge correlation,” Cooper said. “In chess, one bad move can lose the whole game. And in football, if you play really well, a bad game can cost you.” Cooper likened fleeting inattention to pawn structure to missing a second-half blocking task: a seemingly minor misstep that can ruin a day’s work. “It teaches me to be intentional about every snap, about everything,” he said.
When Cooper came to the Cowboys through trade during Awuzie’s second season in 2018, the teammates played regularly in person. Awuzie, who had gambled a bit in college to pass the time during boring classes, quickly took over Cooper’s seriousness about the game.
“He snapped at me pretty well,” said Awuzie, 27. “That feeling of losing wasn’t comfortable, and I’m not the type to back down and stop playing. I wanted to get better.”
He worked on puzzles online, played more and more matches, and studied openings and defenses. It closed the gap between him and Cooper and paid dividends on the field, allowing him to quickly adapt to the myriad techniques NFL receivers threw at him.
“It’s pattern recognition. If a receiver gives me a specific release, strain, route, and I’ve seen that setup before, I’ll likely have an answer for that,” Awuzie said. “I can get into my thoughts a little bit better. I’m a great note-taker, but playing chess has helped me memorize things without having to take notes.”
Scott Goldman, a performance psychologist who has consulted with several teams in professional leagues, sees chess as a useful training ground for elite athletes because of the attention it requires.
“Novice chess players may only be looking at one quadrant of the board, while a veteran player may see the whole board,” Goldman said. “In the world of football, you can call that anticipation. A middle linebacker trying to see play action can’t let the quarterback fake the handoff. He studies the offensive line. They have multiple positions that obscure or mislead intent.”
For Fitzgerald, who also competed in BlitzChamps, being introduced to the game was a turning point in his early life. Years before he became an All-Pro champion of the receiving subtleties of speed and angle, Fitzgerald was a distractible 7-year-old well versed in elementary school disciplinarians. A teacher recommended that he start with chess.
“It slowed down my life,” Fitzgerald said. “More than just football, I’ve looked at life from a more strategic perspective. You think about why you are doing something, how you are going to adapt.”
During his 17 NFL seasons, Fitzgerald played weekly games with his father and brother and devoted his downtime along the way to online puzzles. His career with the Cardinals overlapped in his final two years with Murray, who matched Fitzgerald’s appetite and acumen in the locker room. (“Very aggressive,” Fitzgerald’s scouting report reads.) Since retiring — 39-year-old Fitzgerald has not filed papers for his retirement but has not appeared in an NFL game since 2020 — he has been has become something of an unofficial chess ambassador, praising both his assets and the skills of his former colleagues.
“It’s designed to help break down the negative stigma that football players have – they’re not smart, they’re not thinkers, they’re barbarians,” Fitzgerald said of his motivation for entering the summer tournament. “The NFL has a lot of highly intelligent guys who are critical thinkers. My dad always taught me it’s one thing to hit a man physically, but if you can outwit him intellectually, that’s quite another.”
Chess also helped Fitzgerald and Urschel set new goals for life after football. Hoping to get a 1600 rating, Fitzgerald is tutoring his own son, who he proudly reported has won three out of four games in a recent youth tournament.
Urschel, 31, who attended full-time distance learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during his final season with the Ravens in 2016, has set what he calls a “casual” goal. “I would like to become national champion at some point, let’s say at 2200,” said Urschel. “That’s far in the future, maybe 10 years, when my kids are a bit older and I have more time.”
Among current NFL players, the goals may be more modest, but the stakes are more immediate. When Awuzie played with the white pieces—move first—in the BlitzChamps tournament, she often led with the aggressive Ponziani opening, which advances pawns to lose early control of the middle of the board.
The strategy proved effective in the finals against Cooper, and when the student prevailed, he let his former teacher know about it.
“What drew me to the game in the first place was my competitive nature,” Awuzie said. “I’m still looking for that rival that Amari cultivated in me.”