NEW YORK — Kansas City Chiefs safety and self-proclaimed “techie” Eric Berry missed most of the 2011 season from a season-ending ACL tear. In 2014, he battled injuries throughout the year, eventually facing a Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis that sidelined him until the start of the 2015 campaign.
Yet, while he was inactive for parts of those two seasons, Berry said that playing video games was key to keeping him “mentally sharp.”
“The gaming world is something that is still overlooked and underrated,” Berry said Thursday while attending an adidas launch event for the brand’s new Futurecraft 4D shoe. “From my experiences, I’ve sat out of football a year at a time twice now. The thing that kept me mentally sharp was playing video games. That’s the way I was getting reps. A lot of people don’t understand that visualization is one of the most powerful things you can do. Doing that through a video game where you put yourself through a situation in a first person point of view and you see it from a big picture point of view from how things work together, it can work wonders.”
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Berry added that his favorite game growing up was EA Madden and still is, but he particularly enjoys watching friends and other players compete in Call of Duty.
“The cerebral part of gaming, some people don’t look at it as a skill, that’s definitely a skill — to be able to think, react and maneuver so quickly,” Berry said, who added that problem-solving and critical thinking are some of the takeaways from gaming that he’s been also able to translate to the football field.
Other NFL players, both current and former, have also publicly expressed an interest in gaming, with some like Hank Baskett becoming co-owner of an esports organization. Los Angeles Rams offensive lineman Rodger Saffold bets on esports early years ago as he decided to invest in Rise Nation Gaming.
Just two weeks ago, NFL Hall of Famer and San Fransisco 49ers legend Joe Montana joined a laundry list of investors for a Series A investment in North American organization Cloud9, too.