Isiah
Pacheco.
Isiah
Pacheco.
Rutgers· 5'10"· 216 lb· 4.37s 40
"A 216-pound Rutgers back who ran 4.37 and fell to the 251st pick, then started for a Super Bowl champion as a rookie and won two rings in his first two NFL seasons."Pre-draft read
A 5-10 3/8, 216-pound back who ran 4.37 with a 1.49 ten-yard split and put up 27 bench reps at the combine, a rare density-plus-speed combination for a seventh-round runner. He runs angry in the literal sense: he seeks contact, drops his shoulder into defenders and treats the second level as a place to punish people rather than avoid them.
He is a one-cut downhill runner with a violent finish and legitimate breakaway gear once he squares his shoulders. The pre-draft concerns were ball security and patience: he ran through creases instead of setting them up, and his college yards-per-carry fell as his workload rose. He was also a heavy special teams contributor, which matters for a back drafted this late.
A play-action offense with a zone-based run game that lets a downhill back attack a single crease at full speed behind a spread-out defense.
Year 1: rotational back and kick returner. Ceiling: a lead back on a contending offense who wins on physicality and pass protection.
A patient gap and counter scheme that requires him to stall behind pulling linemen, because his game dies the moment he has to hesitate.
Andy Reid's offense asked him to run behind a light box and finish, which is exactly the question his tape answered.
Rutgers running back Isiah Pacheco, Big Ten in the 2022 NFL Draft
The college tape that preceded the 4.37 combine run.
Isiah Pacheco's top plays of the 2022 NFL season
His rookie year as the starter on a Super Bowl team.
Isiah Pacheco full highlights, Super Bowl LVII
The championship game that made the seventh-round pick famous.
Pacheco was born in Vineland, New Jersey and played at Vineland High School, drawing recruiting interest from Syracuse, Maryland, Virginia Tech and others before committing to Rutgers on June 21, 2017.
He contributed immediately. As a true freshman in 2018 he ran 111 times for 551 yards and three touchdowns across 11 games, averaging 5.0 yards a carry on a Rutgers team that won one game. He took over the workload in 2019 with 169 attempts for 729 yards and seven scores, including a 20-carry, 156-yard, four-touchdown afternoon against Massachusetts on August 20, 2019. He added 515 yards in the nine-game 2020 season and 647 more in 2021.
He finished with 563 carries for 2,442 yards, 18 rushing touchdowns and 47 receptions over 43 games. The production never spiked because the offenses around him rarely functioned, and his 3.9 average as a senior did him no favors with evaluators. He played in both the 2022 Hula Bowl and the East-West Shrine Bowl to raise his profile, then ran 4.37 at the combine. Off the field he had endured the deaths of his brother Travoise in January 2016 and his sister Celeste in September 2017, losses that shaped how he plays.
- 01
Contact balance
he absorbs hits from linebackers and safeties without losing his stride, converting glancing blows into extra yards.
- 02
Speed for his mass
4.37 in the 40 at 216 pounds, with a 1.49 ten-yard split that shows immediate acceleration through the hole.
- 03
Play strength
27 bench press repetitions at the combine, which translated to pass protection reps almost no rookie back earns.
- 04
Special teams value
he handled kickoff returns at Rutgers and was ready to contribute on coverage units on day one.
- 05
Mentality
a genuinely violent finisher who lowers his pads into defenders and never runs out of bounds to save himself.
- 01
Ball security
four fumbles as an NFL rookie confirmed the pre-draft concern that his loose carriage would cost his team possessions.
- 02
Patience
he hits the designed crease at full speed rather than pressing and letting blocks develop in front of him.
- 03
Efficiency trend
his average dropped from 5.0 as a freshman to 3.9 as a senior as defenses loaded up against Rutgers.
- 04
Receiving polish
47 career catches on limited routes left real questions about his third-down role at the next level.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.37sp50
- Vertical
- 33inp50
- Broad jump
- 118inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Rutgers | 11 | 111 | 551 | 3 | 2 | 11 |
| 2019 | Rutgers | 11 | 169 | 729 | 7 | 13 | 83 |
| 2020 | Rutgers | 9 | 116 | 515 | 3 | 19 | 130 |
| 2021 | Rutgers | 12 | 167 | 647 | 5 | 13 | 25 |
| Career | — | 43 | 563 | 2442 | 18 | 47 | 249 |
Season totals sum exactly to the published career line of 563 carries for 2,442 yards, 18 touchdowns and 47 receptions for 249 yards. Starts are not published by season.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A late-round physical back who became a starter and whose peak was cut short by injury.
The contact-seeking running style, if never quite the same career volume.
Another Kansas City back whose postseason moments outshone his regular-season workload.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Pacheco is the best value pick of the 2022 draft. Kansas City took him 251st overall and by midseason he was the starting running back on the team that won Super Bowl LVII. He ran for a 3-yard touchdown in his NFL debut against Arizona, finished his rookie year with 830 rushing yards and 130 receiving yards on 4.9 a carry, added 597 kickoff return yards on 29 attempts, and then averaged 5.3 in the playoff run.
Year two was better. He started 13 of 14 games, ran 205 times for 935 yards and seven touchdowns, caught 44 passes, and in the 2023 postseason led the entire playoff field with 81 carries and 313 yards while scoring three touchdowns on the way to Super Bowl LVIII. Two rings in two seasons from a seventh-round pick. Injuries then took the peak away. He fractured his fibula in Week 2 of 2024 and went on injured reserve on September 18, returning for seven games at 3.7 a carry. In 2025 he managed 462 yards on 118 carries. Kansas City let him go and Detroit signed him on March 12, 2026 to a one-year, $1.81 million deal. Fifty-one games, 42 starts, 2,537 rushing yards, 14 touchdowns and two championships, from the 251st pick.