Football players aren’t just football players anymore. They’re business moguls, fashion models, sports team owners, podcasters, and more. Joe Burrow is one of those NFL stars exploring all the opportunities his fame affords him. And one of those is chess.
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Burrow often comes off as the prom king cool guy with his slicked-back hair and fashion-forward interests. But there’s more to him than that. Like Shrek, Burrow has layers. One of those layers is what some might call his “nerdy” passion for chess, which he first picked up in elementary school.
His interest waned as he went through his own 2010s teen movie, but he said he got back into it during COVID. A chess set can generally be seen at or next to Burrow’s Cincinnati Bengals locker room these days. And when he got a few extra moments recently, he was able to sit down with a chess grandmaster (highest attainable title in chess, only conferred by the FIDE), Nemo Zhou, to play a game and have a chat.
“To be a better quarterback, you have to be thinking two steps ahead. So I’m training my brain to do just that… There’s always a new way to get better,” Burrow says before the chess match.
Then, during the game, the grandmaster asked Burrow about what he felt like the main crossover football skills he could hone while playing a game of chess.
“Quick-thinking, pattern recognition for sure. My position [QB] is almost all pattern recognition, because I have to understand what defensive structure I’m looking at. “
Unsurprisingly, Burrow was dominated by Zhou. She was even talking a little smack to him when he’d make mistakes, asking, “Do you realize you just made a mistake?” To which Burrow answered with a sigh and an exasperated head shake, “No.”
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No doubt the competitor in Joe Burrow believed he could go in there and shock everyone on the set of that little BodyArmour video. And that’s one of the things that makes him such a great quarterback. He took the Bengals from two wins in 2020 to a Super Bowl appearance in 2021. Remember that Kevin Garnett quote.
“Anything is possible!”
But that was almost five years ago now, and the Bengals are staring down the barrel of three straight seasons without a playoff berth if they don’t get it together in 2025. They signed up their two top wideouts, but it seems like things have gotten so dicey with 2024 sack leader Trey Hendrickson that he may be moved. Which is not a great look.
Early returns on the offensive line in front of Burrow, always a Cincy issue during the QB’s tenure, don’t seem encouraging either. Even thinking two steps ahead doesn’t help you when you’ve got an untouched blitzer coming up the A-gap.
