Isiah Pacheco was a highly regarded running back heading into 2024 fantasy football drafts. After all, he was coming off a 2023 campaign that saw him post career highs across the board, including 213.9 fantasy points. That was good enough for him to finish 15th among running backs, and his 15.3 points-per-game average made him a high-end No. 2 fantasy runner.
Pacheco had a fast start to last year, scoring 15.8 and 16.1 fantasy points in his first two games. Unfortunately, he suffered a fractured right fibula in Week 2 and was forced to miss the next 10 weeks.
Upon his return, Pacheco was not the same player on the field or in the stat sheets. Over the final five weeks of the regular season, Pacheco averaged 10.8 touches, 3.6 yards per rush, 10.8 rushing attempts and five PPR points.
More shockingly, Pacheco was in a 50/50 split with Kareem Hunt in terms of snaps played and touches when he did return. That split widened during the postseason, too, as Hunt was the clear lead back on Kansas City’s run to the Super Bowl, which they ultimately lost to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Over those three postseason contests, Pacheco averaged 5.3 touches and 2.8 points.
2025 Fantasy Outlook
Pacheco will enter the 2025 campaign fully healthy, and he’s “put on some good weight,” according to head coach Andy Reid. That’s good news, as Pacheco is one of the league’s most physical and explosive running backs when he’s 100 percent. The concern, though, surrounds what the Chiefs did during the offseason to secure and deepen the backfield.
Hunt was brought back on a one-year deal, and the team also signed Elijah Mitchell. While he’s had injury issues at the pro level, Mitchell can be an explosive back when healthy. The Chiefs also selected a running back, Brashard Smith, in Round 7 of the draft. As a result, Pacheco’s path to workload is suddenly a lot more clouded than it was last summer.
Draft Or Pass
Pacheco is an interesting fantasy case, as he’s just 26 years old and in a seemingly best-case scenario — the top running back in a potentially productive Chiefs offense. The concerns come from his statistical disappearance in the second half of last season (including the playoffs), and the team’s newfound backfield depth after keeping Hunt and adding Mitchell and Smith.
The good news is that Pacheco is coming at a huge discount in fantasy drafts. He’s the RB28 on the NFFC website, with an average draft position of 85.6. Pacheco is the RB30 at Underdog Fantasy, coming off the board at 88.8. That means you can land him, on average, as a No. 3 fantasy running back or flex starter in a 12-team league. That alleviates a lot of the risk involved.
Verdict
Pacheco will be a risk-reward running back in 2025 redrafts, and I wouldn’t select him and expect high-end RB2 totals. However, landing him at the end of the eighth round, as Bob Harris from Footballguys did in the SI 12-team PPR Mock Draft, is sensible. In that case, he’s a “draft.” But if you’re drafting him as a locked-in starter, Pacheco is a gamble.
