The Maryville Daily Forum Maryville, Missouri Thursday, July 20, 1972 - Page 8
Chess Enthusiasm: Elmo Wright and Aaron Brown of the Kansas City Chiefs by Steve Cameron
Liberty — He's not quite ready to take on Boris Spassky, but Elmo Wright is a chess freak.
Wright, the Kansas City Chiefs' second-year wide receiver, took up the game just three years ago, but he packs a portable chess set with magnetized pieces and will play in his room, on airplanes and anywhere else he can find an opponent.
Elmo's consistent rival is defensive end Aaron Brown, who is the Chiefs' unofficial champion. So while Russia's Spassky and American Bobby Fischer contest the world championship of chess, Wright and Brown are having their own duel at training camp.
Besides the caliber of play, Wright jokingly sees another difference in the two matchups. “It's a lot cooler in Iceland,” he says.
Wright and Brown are just two of a host of Chiefs who have jumped into chess with a passion. The silence on board the team plane en route to a road game can be startling as matches are played out up and down the aisle.
Wright, a former academic All-American who is a handful of credits away from a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Houston, sees nothing unusual in football players being avid chess fans. The correlation between football and chess, and the thinking required to be successful at either, is not lost on him.
“The most important thing about chess is concentration,” he says. “Football is the same way. Usually football games aren't won by one team. They're lost by the other team because of a momentary drop in concentration. A good chess player is one who can stay at a peak of concentration all through the game. The two games are quite similar as the mental process required of a player.”
Elmo found out a lot about the mental side of pro football when he joined the Chiefs in 1971 after a brilliant, All-American career at Houston.
“The overall difference was the first thing that struck me,” he says, “In college you don't spend that much time thinking football. When I got to Kansas City I realized I had to think about the game all the time. It's a job, and to be a good professional you have to think of every possible thing you might have to do.”
On the field, the mental pressure was just as tough. “There are a lot more things to concentrate on than in college,” Wright says. “You have to know each assignment perfectly. You have to think about the defenses, the quarterback, the game situation — rookie receivers make a lot of mistakes because of the amount of concentration required.”
Elmo made some mistakes in his first year, but the greatness predicted for him was shining through unmistakably as the season progressed. He made number of spectacular clutch catches and delighted Kansas City fans with an end zone victory dance after his three touchdown receptions.
Overall, Wright snagged 26 passes for 524 years, a very creditable 20.2 yards per catch.
“I wasn't displeased with my rookie year,” he says after a bit of thought. “I would like to have caught more passes but it's stupid to set a goal you can't reach. I mean, I could tell you today that I want to catch 80 balls this year. But I won't because we have a great receiver named Otis Taylor on the other side of the field and I won't have enough passes thrown to me to catch 80.
“The way to judge a receiver isn't by how many passes he catches, but by how many he catches of the ones that are thrown to him and what he does with them after he catches them.”
However many balls Elmo grabbed in '71, his effect on the Chiefs' passing game was obvious. Taylor caught 57 for 1,110 yards and, asked for the key to his fabulous year, says simply: “Len Dawson—and Elmo Wright.”
Otis' reasoning is that with Wright darting around loose, a defensive secondary could rarely afford to double-team him, a luxury he had rarely enjoyed in the past.
With the Chiefs flaunting two excellent wide receivers, Elmo Wright's game has thus become like chess in another way. He's only having to battle one opponent at a time. That almost guarantees that some NFL defensive backs will find themselves checkmated in 1972.
Elmo Wright and Aaron Brown of the Kansas City Chiefs 20 Jul 1972, Thu The Maryville Daily Forum (Maryville, Missouri) Newspapers.com
