Saquon Barkley’s Affinity For Chess Has Helped Make Him A Better Football Player: ‘It’s All About Strategy.’
Saquon Barkley’s Affinity For Chess Has Helped Make Him A Better Football Player: ‘It’s All About Strategy.’
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Will Shipley’s stall in the NovaCare Complex locker room is right next to Saquon Barkley’s. The rookie running back often sees Barkley on his cell phone in his downtime, from the locker room to the team meeting room to the running backs room and even at the Linc before games.
But Shipley quickly realized that the star running back wasn’t mindlessly scrolling social media in his spare moments throughout the workday.
“Pretty much all places, I’ve seen him have that phone out playing some chess,” Shipley said.
Barkley calls chess his fun “kill-time” game. Even when he’s killing time away from football, the Associated Press offensive player of the year has found a way to flex his competitive muscle on the chessboard. He began to learn the game in the lead-up to the draft in 2018, shortly before he played Hall of Fame running back Curtis Martin, one of his childhood idols.
» READ MORE: Eagles’ Zack Baun returns to his old home with the Saints, this time as an All-Pro
Well, perhaps “played” isn’t the right word, according to Barkley.
“I got my butt whupped,” the 27-year-old Barkley said. “I wouldn’t say I ‘played.’”
Since their match, Barkley said he has gotten “a lot better” at chess. He wouldn’t say he could beat Martin nowadays, though. He began to invest more of his spare time in chess while playing for the New York Giants, facing off against defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux.
Barkley brought that affinity for chess with him to Philadelphia. His most common opponent is punter Braden Mann, whom he called “really good.” Defensive back Avonte Maddox has experienced Barkley’s wrath on the chessboard, too.
“Avonte [stinks],” Barkley said.
Maddox, who identifies as a Catan whiz, is aware. That was reinforced in the game of chess they played over a week before the Super Bowl.
“I don’t even know how he beat me, but he beat me,” Maddox said. “It was fast. He had every single piece I had.”
Barkley typically plays his teammates on the chess.Com app. Mann also brought his chess set from home to the players’ lounge of the Eagles locker room at the NovaCare Complex, but he and Barkley don’t break it out often. The punter and running back typically use the app to play on long road trips.
Mann said the matches can get “a little bit” heated in the app’s chat function, which isn’t a surprise, given Barkley’s competitive nature on the football field. They turn up the heat even more through timed games, in which each player has a fixed amount of time to win the match. If one of their individual clocks hits zero, even if they have more pieces left on the board than their opponent, that player loses the game.
“The competitiveness … I’m sure he’s like that with everything he decides to do,” Mann said. “Golf, when he decides to golf, he’s all-in on it, in chess, or whatever it is.”
The competitive aspect of chess isn’t the only correlation to football, according to Barkley.
“Football is a game of chess,” Barkley said. “Sometimes, it’s setting stuff up. It’s taking advantage of the opportunities that your opponent gives you.”
Barkley’s physical gifts are obvious, whether he’s pulling off a backward hurdle over a defender or accelerating up the field on one of his 46 explosive runs. What makes Barkley special is his ability to marry his physical gifts with his ability to quickly process on the field in real-time, according to Jemal Singleton, his position coach.
When it comes to the mental side required to thrive at running back, Shipley said Barkley has a “sixth sense.” Barkley is always thinking multiple steps ahead, using his film study and preparation throughout the week to inform his decision-making on game day.
“It’s all about strategy, and so is the game of chess,” Shipley said.
Shipley pointed to his 78-yard touchdown run in the snow in the Eagles’ divisional-round victory against the Los Angeles Rams as a prime example of Barkley’s high-level processing. The rookie running back recalled their discussions during the week and on the sideline on game day about how the Rams were attacking the run game. Based on the particular look, the group felt like a jump cut to the front side was going to be available for Barkley to exploit.
Much of the chatter in the aftermath of that play focused on whether Barkley was lined up on the correct side of Hurts. But according to Shipley, Barkley still knew that as soon as he saw the front-side linebacker jump inside, he was going to jump cut to the outside. It worked, and Barkley “banged his head on the goalpost,” Shipley said.
“It’s just an instinct that you have,” Shipley said. “Sometimes, people ask you, ‘How did you do that?’ And this year, you could ask Saquon that a lot of times. ‘How’d you do that?’ But it’s almost just a sense you have when you’re out there on the field and just understanding how defenses develop, where different guys are going to be coming from, even before you see them.”
Lane Johnson calls it a “game within a game” for Barkley in his chess-like “battles” against opposing defenders. In the NFC championship game against the Washington Commanders, the marquee matchup featured Barkley and 10-time Pro Bowl and six-time first-team All-Pro inside linebacker Bobby Wagner. Barkley excelled at setting up his runs throughout the game, which led to his 118-yard rushing day complete with three touchdowns.
“He may be able to give him [an] illusion a couple plays,” Johnson said, “and then really hit him with something down the road. That goes with a lot of players, a lot of them, the D-line.
“It’s really what he studies, along with the offensive line, too. He does a good job of sensing all that.”
Thinking multiple steps ahead under pressure is at the core of playing chess, according to Seth Makowsky, the founder of Poison Pawn. Through his company, Makowsky helps elite athletes sharpen their decision-making skills by training them through chess.
In his work with running backs, which most recently includes the group at UCLA last season, Makowsky recognized two components of playing the position that overlap with chess. One is the technical aspect of understanding the tendencies of an opponent and recognizing formations. Then, there’s the emotional part, which requires players of both activities to rebound quickly from adversity.
“Even though athletes, we might see them as superhuman and robots. They’re people, they’re human, and they’re dealing with a lot of things,” Makowsky said, “and when something doesn’t go right, how one responds to it, it’s very similar how someone responds on the chessboard when they lose a piece can be very similar to how they respond on the field when something goes wrong, and something’s going to go wrong at some point. And being able to process that really efficiently and effectively is critical.”
Singleton sees that resilience play out on the field on a weekly basis. Even when a run play doesn’t hit early in the game, Barkley is eager to stick with his approach and chip away at a defense.
» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley envisioned being in a position to win a Super Bowl long before wearing Eagles green
“He does go through his process,” Singleton said. “You see him all the time where he’s maybe talking to the line, ‘Hey, we were one block away,’ or, ‘We were one step away on this one.’ He knows what he’s capable of doing, which is so awesome. And he can make that next cut or make that next move. So when he just stays consistent with his process, which he has done, the runs come.”
Mann said that he and Barkley are even in their head-to-head chess record. The punter aims to settle their record before the offseason comes. Maddox, on the other hand, might need a break.
“When you feel like you’re getting attacked, you should be trying to attack his king to make him stop,” Maddox said. “But my pieces keep coming backward toward me. His pieces keep coming forward. I’m kind of just like, ‘All right, I give up. You got me.’”
Come Sunday, Barkley will strive to make the Kansas City Chiefs feel the same way.
“I’m happy he’s here,” Maddox said. “We don’t got to go against him with the Giants no more.”
The Eagles will face the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
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