John Urschel lifts the blinds in his second-floor office in the mathematics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Outside is Cambridge in all of its springtime splendor on a mid-April afternoon. Everything about his office says “college professor” – the computer on one side of the desk, the stack of papers on the other, the books on the shelves behind him.
He grins through his beard and his eyes sparkle behind his glasses when he describes his research in linear algebra. When he gestures enthusiastically, you can imagine those huge hands protecting his quarterback from opposing pass rushers – which he once did as a guard for the Baltimore Ravens.
Urschel describes his present line of work – in matrix computations – as a way to simplify things, making a nonlinear sequence into a linear one. But some sequences aren’t exactly linear. Consider this one: Over a decade ago, when he was a student-athlete at Penn State, he was very good at very different things – math and football. He contemplated two different paths – the NFL or getting his math PhD. Football won out, at least temporarily: He declared for the draft, and was taken by Baltimore in the fifth round in 2014. As a rookie, he played on a team that went on a playoff run. But something was missing: The math discussions from his college classes. Gradually, Urschel segued back to academia, earning his PhD at MIT, where he’s been on the faculty since 2023. With a career and a family, his football experience is over, he says. But it’s definitely left a legacy.
“Somehow, when I watch a game, it’s hard to ever watch it as a fan,” the 33-year-old admits. “For many, many years, I just watched an insane number of hours of football film. That was my job. It’s very hard to turn that off.”
Football has changed since his playing days – such as the increased use of analytics, including more coaches going for it on fourth down.
“I think it actually makes the game more exciting,” he says. “Good time management leads to closer games.”
That said, Urschel does not follow the game much these days. “I have no time to watch pro football and barely time to watch college football,” he says.
He doesn’t even have time for another once-beloved pursuit – chess, although when his kids are older and he’s further along in his professorial career, he hopes to return to it, maybe even achieve a rating in the 2200s, which would make him a national master. It’s no secret which chess grandmaster he admires: Magnus Carlsen.
“Magnus is Magnus,” Urschel says. “Magnus is amazing. He’s a singular personality who popularized chess in a way that very few would be able to do.” In a championship chess tournament, whether classical, rapid or blitz, “there can be eight, 10, 12 players, and often the most likely event is that he wins … I can’t stress enough how impressive a player he is.”
Urschel may never play chess at quite so high a level, but in math it’s a different story. He held a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Advanced Study, a research hub in Princeton once headed by J Robert Oppenheimer; he’s a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows; and he’s even got a theorem named after him and one of his mentors – the Urschel-Zikatanov Theorem. As Urschel explains, this theorem relates to “connectivity properties of certain partitions in networks, one of my earlier works,” with Ludmil Zikatanov of Penn State.
In the fall, Urschel will be teaching an intro to linear algebra class for the first time. The course can have up to 300 students. He also works with an MIT program for high schoolers called √mathroots. According to its website, the program was “designed to broaden the talent pool for the mathematical community” – a goal that resonates for Urschel as a Black mathematician.
“There are not very many Black mathematicians, very few of us, a very small number,” he says. “It can be an isolating experience for others.”
He adds: “One of the significant problems we have in this country is, the quality of education for children is very uneven. It’s very hard to catch up on getting behind in math. It can be done, but if you come from an area where the quality of math education is, let’s say, lower than other places in the country, it’s very hard to be successful in math later on. This is something I think about constantly.”
In addition to contemplating how to level this playing field, he – like many of his colleagues in academia – is thinking about the pressure on universities coming from the Trump administration.
“I think it’s something on everyone’s mind,” Urschel says. “Concern is warranted in all parts of academia. It’s not quite so clear what the next few years are going to look like for universities – questions around government funding for fundamental research that often leads to important breakthroughs in the foundational sciences … It’s something that only time will tell what exactly things will look like.”
Urschel spends a significant amount of time thinking about the future. He devoted considerable thought to his own future when he was a senior at Penn State.
“It was a question of whether I would try to play professionally or go start my PhD in math,” he says. “I was not immediately sure which I wanted to do. The more I thought, the more I realized, playing football for quite some time at the highest level was something that seemed so amazing that I could not pass up the opportunity.”
Urschel declared for the draft, and was featured on an annual NFL Films production titled Hey Rookie: Welcome to the NFL. At the end of day one, he was still waiting for his turn.
“I always looked up, at the end of the day – day one, day two, day three … to see who was drafted,” he says. “It was a little stressful.”
The stress lifted when the Ravens drafted him. The team went on a playoff run in Urschel’s rookie season, defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers before falling 35-31 in the divisional round to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, who would go on to win the Super Bowl that year.
It was a good first season for Urschel, yet something felt incomplete.
“I realized I was missing the academic environment,” he says. “I missed talking math with people, learning things, being around other people who like … math-related issues.”
Over the next two years, Urschel remained a professional football player while simultaneously pursuing a PhD at MIT. He subsequently retired from the NFL, giving him perspective on players’ transitioning out of the league, and where they can receive help.
“It’s something the NFL Players Association does incredibly well,” he says. “We have our own association, our own players’ union. We’ve got to make lots of decisions. They have the sorts of programs which help former players.”
Asked about any help provided by the league itself, Urschel says that he is “not so expert on [this].”
In addition to missing the math classroom, there was another factor that led to Urschel thinking his days in the NFL were limited: A concern over concussions.
Asked whether he has experienced any concussion-related effects, Urschel replies, “To this point, no … In the future, it remains to be seen. As a former football player, it’s a good idea to try to lead a healthy life – or a relatively healthy one. We cannot all be as healthy as we’d like. Take care of yourself, with your body, stay mentally sharp.”
As he gets up from his desk to say goodbye, he still looks very much like a football player in his black sweatsuit. He may not have time to watch it anymore, but he’s definitely got strong opinions about it.
“It’s a great sport, but also a very dangerous one,” Urschel says. “Anyone who does it should be aware of this fact. There are health benefits to being very active,” yet “serious physical contact is dangerous – it definitely should be kept in mind.”