Running desperate; Isiah Pacheco made the difference for the Chiefs Sunday

The 2nd year RB and his seemingly endless energy helped Kansas City hold off the Jets in an ugly win.

The Chiefs aren’t supposed to win games when Patrick Mahomes plays poorly. And MAN, was he playing poorly against the Jets for a stretch.

We’ll talk about Mahomes more in his weekly film review, but Sunday night featured one of the strangest performances we’ve seen from the star quarterback over the last several seasons. He threw multiple awful picks and seemed to lack his normal arm strength and accuracy. In the meantime, Zach Wilson managed to cobble together the best drives of his career and a seemingly unsurmountable Chiefs lead got erased.

Enter Isiah Pacheco, the man who runs like Trey Smith blocks; Like the ground (and defenders) have somehow wronged him in a past life and the only way he can make them pay is by throwing absolutely everything he has into every single play.

In today’s era of “running backs don’t matter” (more a statement as to the number of competent RB’s on the market and the reliance of all ‘backs on blocking than anything else), Pacheco has managed to grab attention on a team known much more for its finesse. And he’s done it with a style of fighting, scrapping, clawing, and just CHURNING for every single yard he can possibly grab.

Saying that Pacheco runs angry doesn’t really do it justice. He runs like rent is due. He runs like someone has his family held hostage and the only way to free them is to gain yards. He runs like his life actually depends on it. He runs like he’s desperate.

And on Sunday, the Chiefs needed every single desperate yard he could provide. Let’s talk about what Pacheco did outside the box score and how he managed to, for at least a single game, lift up an offense that was (again) struggling more than expected.