Highlights of Kansas City Chiefs running back and former Rutgers football star Isiah Pacheco often show comments such as, “he runs like he’s mad at the world” and “he hurts the ground when he runs” – which allude to his game-breaking speed and explosive runs.
But for Pacheco, there’s an underlying reason as to why he runs so hard.
Pacheco has gone from a seventh-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft to an important part of the Kansas City team. The rookie may play a huge role for the Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Sunday and will no doubt be thinking about his family – including his two siblings who were murdered when he was young.
In 2016, when Isiah was a high school football player at Vineland High School in New Jersey, his older brother, Tivares, was murdered. The following year, during Isiah’s senior season in September 2017, his sister Celeste was murdered when she was shot during a domestic violence dispute.
“Why [do] I leave it all out there on the field?” Isiah started to tell the Big Ten Network when he was on the Rutgers football team. “You never know when it’s going to be your last opportunity – I never knew when it was gonna be my last time seeing my sister or my brother.
“My brother ended up getting stabbed and [it hurt] me because I didn’t have that same guidance when I would hear him scream my name at the football fields. One year after that, we got a knock on the door by a family member. She says, ‘It’s Celeste (sister), she’s gone.’ I’m just in shock because I didn’t know what to do after losing a brother and a sister now.”
After the devastations, Isiah made it his goal to work hard in order to make his siblings proud.
“I attended my sister’s funeral [and I] had a game that night,” Isiah told the Big Ten Network. [I still played because] I wanted to make her smile.”
Despite the tragedy that struck during two high school football seasons, Isiah, who played running back and quarterback, finished his high school career after rushing 154 times for 1,414 yards and 18 touchdowns while passing for 598 yards and three touchdowns.
Isiah is the only one in his family who chose to play football. His parents were supportive and he even reps a necklace with his mom’s nickname on it.
“I just want the best for [Isiah] because there’s a lot of things he’s been through that nobody should go through,” Felicia, Isiah’s mom, told the Big Ten Network. “I just want the pain to go away and I want a good life for him.”
Isiah is mixed-race with Latino and Black roots; his father’s side is Puerto Rican and his mom is African American.
“To work so hard at something I really want to do and finally be here (in Arizona for the Super Bowl), I had to soak it all in,” Isiah said during Super Bowl LVII Opening Night. “I broke down the other night to my parents about it because it’s so exciting to be here.”
The Super Bowl-bound rookie continues to honor his passed siblings everywhere he goes. He showed NBC Philadelphia his tattoos which honor his brother and sister, as well as a tattoo that best describes his running game with the words, “Go hard or go home.”
“[Isiah] broke down [during a team exercise when he shared his story on losing his brother and sister] and just told them how it affected him, how it made him feel and why he goes so hard every day in practice and lifts and in the game and just lays it all out there on the field,” then-Rutgers OL Raiqwon O’Neal told the Big Ten Network.
At Rutgers, where he was a criminal justice major, Isiah finished his football career ranked No. 6 in program history with 563 carries, No. 7 with 2,442 rushing yards and No. 11 with 3,039 all-purpose yards.
Following his junior year, Isiah opted for the NFL Draft. Despite being undersized at 5-foot-10, he was posted at 216 pounds and still had the speed for the record books. He posted the fastest time of any running back at the Combine with a 4.37 second 40-yard dash.
With the Chiefs, Isiah played in all 17 games as a rookie – totaling 830 rushing yards and 130 receiving yards with five touchdowns.
Isiah could be considered as the best late pick in the 2022 Draft and he may ultimately help the Chiefs win their second Super Bowl in four years.
“[Isiah] has all the talent in the world,” Patrick Mahomes said during Super Bowl LVII Opening Night. “We keep putting him in there, and he keeps producing. He’ll be a main staple for this team for a long time, and hopefully, he can be a main staple in this Super Bowl, too.”
