Why Bengals QB Joe Burrow has kept a chessboard by his locker this season - Cincinnati Bengals Blog- ESPN

CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow looked at the opposition, plotted his next move and prepared to strike.

The execution required only lifting a finger. With Bengals cornerback Chidobe Awuzie seated across from him in the locker room, Burrow fianchettoed — a chess maneuver when one repositions their respective pieces to free a bishop for a diagonal attack.

Yes, the franchise-changing quarterback who relishes the challenge of dissecting and exploiting football defenses also happens to enjoy chess.

“Chess is fun,” Burrow said in a January 2021 news conference. “It’s very strategic, and you have to plan all your moves. That kind of calls to me.”

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Throughout his life, Burrow’s interest in chess has been sparked and later rekindled during times he was forced to stay inside.

Burrow traced his first interest in the game back to his childhood in southeast Ohio, when the weather forced his elementary school into having indoor recess.

“It got too cold and we would play chess,” Burrow said.

Burrow, who will travel to play the Titans in an AFC divisional-round game Saturday (4:30 p.m. ET, CBS), picked it back up during isolation at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and started playing more around the same time he suffered his season-ending left knee injury that November.

But his interest hit a new level ahead of this season. Since training camp, a brown-and-white chessboard perched atop a rolling cart has been part of the team’s locker room décor. Burrow initially played most of his games against Thaddeus Moss, a tight end on the practice squad who was Burrow's