Kansas City Chiefs RB Isiah Pacheco followed up his impressive rookie campaign with career numbers across the board courtesy of an expanded role in this high-powered offense.
Can fantasy football managers expect Pacheco to make the leap into the elite at the running back position entering his third NFL season?
Isiah Pacheco’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Total Fantasy Points: 267.4
- Rushing Yards: 1,310.0
- Rushing TDs: 9.0
- Receptions: 44.3
- Receiving Yards: 284.1
- Receiving TDs: 1.6
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 15. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Pacheco This Year?
Pacheco may not have a 1,000-yard rushing campaign on his résumé through his first two years in the NFL, but he was the clear-cut leading back of an offense that still generates trips to the red zone regularly.
Pacheco’s Career Fantasy Production
- 2023: 935 rushing yards, 44 receptions, 244 receiving yards, nine TDs (RB15 overall)
- 2022: 830 rushing yards, 13 receptions, 130 receiving yards, five TDs (RB37 overall)
The trends fantasy managers wanted to see from Pacheco last year were both present in spades. He saw 135 more carries than any other running back on the roster — 205 carries to Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s 70. Additionally, Pacheco more than tripled his receptions from his rookie year and saw his touchdown output nearly double as well.
Another encouraging sign is Pacheco’s continuing efficiency in his expanded role. His yards per carry dropped from 4.88 to 4.56, which is noteworthy but still falls within the effective range for a leading ball carrier.
The best sign of fantasy success was Pacheco’s usage in the red zone in 2023. His 42 carries inside the opponent’s 20-yard line was tied for the eighth-highest mark in the league.
Kansas City’s offense may have finished 14th in scoring with 22.2 points per game last year, but the Chiefs finished seventh in the league with 61 trips to the red zone. If Pacheco continues to dominate the workload and the Chiefs manage to make a return to the top-five scoring offenses — where they finished in 2021 and 2022 — then his TD ceiling certainly feels like it could be in the double digits.
One could try to nitpick Pacheco’s nine carries for just three yards inside the 5-yard line as a concern about his potential effectiveness in a short-yardage role, but he still managed to score five touchdowns on those nine carries. Ultimately, he should have those opportunities again in a high-powered offense with a lack of significant competition in this backfield.
Pacheco’s ADP at No. 32 overall (RB11 off the board) in the third round feels very appropriate for the leading ball carrier on a traditionally very productive offense. For some additional context, he’s currently being drafted ahead of Travis Etienne Jr., Josh Jacobs, and Joe Mixon but just behind Derrick Henry, Kyren Williams, and De’Von Achane.
If there were a strong case for any player behind Pacheco seeing a large share of the workload behind him, I would be a bit more skeptical about taking him at the low-end RB1 price. Yet, Edwards-Helaire, Deneric Prince, and Louis Rees-Zammit don’t feel like viable threats a this time to steal a significant amount of work away from the incumbent and projected starter.
Pacheco’s per-game production in full-PPR formats suggests he has top-10 upside, which makes this a very reasonable price on draft day.
