Whose Job Is It Anyway? The Story Of An Improv QB

Sandwiched between two lakes in the Fort Worth, TX area, a fourth grader was on a tear. Around 2007, elementary school science teacher Michael Staten decided to introduce fourth-grade student Kyler M. to chess. His classmates could not unseat him. 

Kyler Murray was one of those kids that won at everything. He was hyper-competitive and hyper-athletic, which meant that whether you were playing Connect 4 or high school football, Murray would be a force.

He holds his place as a Texas High School football legend. He once fell behind 28-10 before rattling off six straight touchdown drives. He’d regularly turn dead lost situations into explosive plays. 

He is one of very few athletes who could excel at multiple sports at the collegiate level. He is one of two athletes in history to be drafted in the first round in two of the major four professional sports leagues.

The Las Vegas Athletics, who were the Oakland Athletics when they drafted Murray, would still welcome him to the team.

Now, Murray finds himself released by the team that drafted him and subject to a quarterback competition with J.J. McCarthy.

Every other elite athlete, with the exception of Scott Burrell in the 1990s, had to focus all of their energy on one sport to excel at it. So how did Murray break that mold? How can you be that good at everything? And how can it suddenly fall apart?

In 2022, at the peak of a season that was about to collapse, Kyler Murray bragged that he can play without spending as much time as his peers watching film. He’d walk this back after it blew up in his face, but I think he really meant it. “It’s Easy” is still his bio, even as the 2022 season collapsed and Murray would never lead the Cardinals back to the playoffs. 

The best way to get into Murray’s mind might not be on the football field, but rather, over the chessboard. 

Every year, Chess.com hosts a charity exhibition tournament for professional athletes called BlitzChamps. Murray has participated every year since the 2nd edition of Blitzchamps, placing highly in each of the last three years. On May 26th, Blitzchamps V wrapped up with Kyler Murray losing to Justin Herbert in the semifinal, and again in the loser’s final.

Fittingly, these events use a Blitz format. That means each player has only three minutes total to play the game out. Players don’t have time for concrete calculation and have to act on instinct and principle. Which makes it perfect for Kyler Murray’s approach.

Murray prefers to play the Italian Game as white. It starts with a pawn move to e4 followed by developing a bishop and knight. With two centralized pieces and the option to castle quickly unlocked, it gives Murray a lot of tools. 

It’s popular for a reason. It’s one of the most well-covered openings in chess. That means there is a lot of opportunity to memorize the ins and outs and gain an advantage in a format where every second to think is precious.

Kyler Murray does not do this.

Here is how this year’s elimination game against Justin Reid kicked off. Reid beat Murray in the championship for both of the last two years, so he had his work cut out for him.

Experienced chess players will notice a problem here: Reid played the Sicilian. The Sicilian is insanely complicated, but it always starts with black playing C5. Playing that same bishop move in the start is no longer called the Italian Game. Now, Kyler has played the Bowdler Attack, and it’s not a great idea. 

Reid’s pawn gets to freely control two squares, including d4, where the knight wants to go. Reid can also play e6 and blunt the bishop’s range of options. 

That’s not how this game goes down, but it’s revealing that Kyler Murray will stick to his series of Italian Game moves, even when they are universally understood as a bad idea. Italian Game players usually have a specific response to the Sicilian that they’ll play instead of their main strategy. 

Think of it like lining up a short cornerback against a tall receiver. You can win sometimes, but you’ll be at an objective disadvantage, and you may want to think about rotating your defensive backs a different way. 

Every chess game eventually gets to its own unique position, never played before (it’s a cool math thing, we don’t have time). This uncharted territory is where Kyler is clearly more comfortable.

Here, he lays a trap. He moves his queen to f3, separating it from the knight on d4. On its surface, it looks like he blundered something juicy.

Reid could follow the path laid out above by taking the knight on d4, then the pawn on c2. That would put the king in check, forcing Murray to waste a move running away while Reid took the rook on a1.

It’s too good to be true!

While Reid snatches up what he thinks is a free knight, his pawn on f7 is in dire straits. See that white bar on the left side? That’s a sort of win probability meter. You will notice it is entirely white. Murray can now take the f7 pawn with his queen, put the king in check, and the only legal move for Reid is to slide the king to d8.

After that, the queen can continue her rampage, take the bishop, and that’s checkmate. Kyler Murray wins. Justin Reid goes home. Reid had to resist that free knight and deal with the problem on f7 to continue the game normally. 

In the early game of chess, “attack the f7 pawn” is a good principle. In blitz chess, you have to rely on those principles to find opportunities like the one Murray takes advantage of. Keep that mentality in mind.

There is a limit to how much you can accomplish without memorizing opening theory. Playing fast chess on vibes works, but it can only carry you so far.

This is why I’m bringing up this random chess game. Murray displayed a lack of study for a player at his level, but found a way to win in the chaos of the middle game. Kyler Murray thrives in chaos. So much so that he invites it.

That’s the Kyler Murray quote that got him in so much trouble in 2021. Much like Kevin O’Connell, who dropped his infamous “organizations fail young quarterbacks” quote in 2024 after a 3-0 start, Murray was taking something of a victory lap. The Cardinals were 10-4 and leading the NFC West when this article got published, and Murray was in the MVP conversation.  

Never take a victory lap.

The Cardinals finished that season losing 4 of 5, lost the division and bounced right out of the playoffs in the Wild Card round. As Kyler’s play declined, that quote came back up. Similar to O’Connell, the quote doesn’t sting you until people are mad at your performance.

It aptly describes his chess, based on my extremely amateur ability to analyze 1200-1300 level blitz games. Does it describe his football game as well?