KC Chiefs’ Justin Reid is a hard hitter, capable kicker ... and chess champion?

During Chiefs training camp at St. Joseph in 2023, I spoke with linebacker Drue Tranquill about becoming the NFL chess champion and parallels between those two pursuits.

About that time, safety Justin Reid revealed what happened when he took on the champ.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Reid said, smiling.

Which led to the initial premise of this piece: a game of chess or three with Reid, figuring it could potentially be manageable, given how it went for him against his teammate.

Plus, hey, I used to play plenty with my father. And I still remember the three-move checkmate maneuver known as the Fool’s Mate.

So even after Reid won this year’s NFL chess championship through Chess.com’s BlitzChamps III tournament, I reckoned it would be worthwhile to play him as a new way at chess and football, since I’d already enjoyed Tranquill’s perspective.

At least until Reid and l recently revisited the possibility one day near his locker, where he keeps a chess board up by his shoulder pads.

He showed me the chess-themed undershirt he’d worn under his jersey that day … and asked me about my favorite openings … and, gulp, told me he’d hired a grandmaster (James Canty) to coach him.

That sinking feeling reminded me of once going to Spain, where I found myself drawing on every minute of dwindling knowledge gained from four or five years of Spanish classes — just to formulate one sentence … only to be instantly bewildered and gridlocked by the rapid response.

Careful what you wish for.

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So I figured it wasn’t going to be good for anybody, least of all me, to go through with playing Reid — who smiled at my preemptive surrender.

Especially since the idea all along was to illuminate what the game means to him and how his passion for it reflects him on and off the field.

And the ever-amiable Reid, who attended Stanford and considers himself a lifelong learner, didn’t need that kind of prompting to cast light on a subject that also speaks to what enables him to be a key piece for the Chiefs.

A knight in shining shoulder pads

In his case, the piece is a knight on the chess board — which he compares to a Swiss army knife.

“I’m like a hybrid safety-linebacker … I kick,” he said as we sat in an office at the team’s practice facility a few days before this bye week. “You’ve always got to be careful with knights; you never know how they might jump and get you.”

As for other pieces, Reid offered that coach Andy Reid might best be considered the king and quarterback Patrick Mahomes the all-powerful queen.

Then there’s the rooks — “heavy hitters,” as he put it — like tight end Travis Kelce and (the now-injured) running back Isiah Pacheco.

Speedster Xavier Worthy makes for a fine example of a bishop: Because he’s a long-range piece, Reid said, who can just “snipe across the field” as a wide receiver.

And then there’s the most fundamental group of all … the offensive and defensive linemen that he wants you to know belie the term “pawns,” even if they essentially mirror their opening setting on the board.

“The pawns really are the backbone and the skeleton of chess,” Reid said. “Like, everything goes through the pawns, which is kind of like the trenches.”

Perhaps mindful of offensive lineman Wanya Morris’ touchdown reception against the Bengals, he added, “A pawn can turn into any piece you want it to be. A pawn can turn into a queen. It can turn into a rook. It could turn into whatever you need it to be, you know?”

Puzzles and patterns

Reid grew up in Prairieville, Louisiana, as one of four siblings in a profoundly athletic family.

His older brother, Eric Jr., was a safety at LSU and started 98 NFL games in seven seasons. At LSU, his father, Eric Sr., was the NCAA 110-meter hurdle champion in 1987.

And Reid’s mother, Sharon Guillory-Reid, played linebacker for a semi-pro football team, the Baton Rouge Wildcats.

“She tells everybody that me and my brother got our football talents from her,” Reid said. “She’s not lying.”

But the children also were pushed academically and to be principled and raised to be what Reid called “independent and mindful — of myself and other people and situations.”

So he was always curious. He recalled how he had started to bombard his teachers with questions by around second grade. And he always was intrigued by trying to solve puzzles and discern patterns, learning along the way how that all was part of his personality type.

“So when something piques my interest, I like to dive into it,” he said. “I like to find out every detail about it.”

Small wonder that Reid studied industrial engineering at Stanford. Among too many other passions to catalog, he taught himself to play piano and loves to bowl and play poker and design.

He’s recently been helping chess.com create its next trophies for NFL champs. And last season it was Reid who designed that “In Spags We Trust” T-shirt worn by KC players in honor of defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.

Further reflecting his vast range of interests, Reid has dedicated his JReid InDeed foundation to “partnerships that promote healthy, sustainable communities and help young people thrive in a tech-driven environment” — all in underfunded and underserved neighborhoods in Baton Rouge, Kansas City and in Houston, where he spent his first four NFL seasons before joining the Chiefs in 2022.

Every possible angle

While Reid had an early interest in chess, it more or less went dormant among all his other pursuits.

But during his time with the Texans, it was rekindled when he sought a game with former Chiefs defensive back Phillip Gaines as a way to bond with a new teammate.

Never mind that he was “destroyed” by Gaines, who around the Texans became known as “Grandmaster Phil.”

That humbling whetted Reid’s appetite all the more.

Next thing you know, he was spending hours watching YouTube videos about chess, and was further compelled when the “Queen’s Gambit” miniseries came out on Netflix.

Then he started working on the Queen’s Gambit itself and the Scotch Game , Gaines’ inclination. And the Sicilian . And the King’s Indian.

And playing every single day online. And playing with teammate Leo Chenal every Saturday. And Tranquill or other teammates when they can find the right time.

And hiring Canty a month or so before “BlitzChampsIII” — the eight-man competition that featured reigning champion Tranquill and the winner of the first such event, Titans cornerback Chidobe Awuzie.

(If you think Reid takes chess seriously, consider how Awuzie, now with the Titans, put it to bengals.com a few years ago : Chess “is helping me in just my general life. Diagnosing things. Predicting things. Protecting important things. I think it’s one of the oldest games because it relates a lot to life. They call it a game of war, and life every day is pretty much a war if you want it to be or whether you know it or not. You fight for love, you fight for life, you fight for the people next to you, all of that.”)

You get the idea.

“I enjoy the details … I enjoy the nitty-gritty,” Reid said. “I like seeing every possible angle of, ‘What if this happens? What if that happens?’”

That’s the same lens through which he views football.

Especially considering that to prevail in speed chess requires not just making a good decision but making the right decision promptly.

“You have to make it quickly, or else it doesn’t matter,” Reid said. “Which is kind of the same thing you have to do in football.”

Another translation to football: As on a chess board, Reid can tell you what every player on the football field is doing … or supposed to be doing.

Because of that depth of preparation, he typically believes he can anticipate what might go awry, even as he’s making calls and checks.

“If something goes wrong in the middle of a play,” he said, “I can usually recognize it pretty quickly and just try and fix it before it becomes an apparent error on film.”

‘Every game is different’

Speaking of film study, Reid even applied that to preparing for the tournament in May.

Reid, who turns to chess for breaks from film study, broke down some opponents’ chess tendencies through video before beating Awuzie in the first round of the eight-player double-elimination format.

Later, he swept Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray (2-0) in the grand final. A certain mastery of the hobby earned Reid $30,000 for the charity of his choice, JReid InDeed.

And much like his zealous hopes to help the Chiefs claim an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl, winning only seems to make him hungrier for more.

“What makes chess so interesting is that there’s so many different moves and complexities, and every game is different,” he said. “That’s very stimulating for me.”

And telling about him, too.