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Is Isiah Pacheco, Brashard Smith, or Kareem Hunt the RB1 for the Chiefs? Should you draft Pacheco, Smith, or Hunt in 2025 fantasy football drafts? John's expert draft analysis and advice.
The Kansas City Chiefs have a bit of a quagmire at running back right now. Veterans Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt (quad) were the team's two lead backs last season. The Chiefs also signed Elijah Mitchell, formerly of the San Francisco 49ers, and selected rookie back Brashard Smith in this year's draft.
It might not be easy at first glance to try to sniff out the pecking order here. But a bit of digging should get you the information you need to know to draft the right player. That's what I'm here for, after all! I've analyzed the film, advanced statistics, and skill sets of each player, as well as the Chiefs offense as a whole.
My extensive work has led me to get a good idea of what's going on here. At least I hope so. I'll do my best to make my points compelling. If you're certain that Pacheco will return to being the unequivocal lead back here and everyone else is irrelevant, though, you may disagree with me. Either way, let's dive in!
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Isiah Pacheco Fantasy Football Outlook
Pacheco started the season as the unquestioned lead back. At that time, Hunt wasn't even on the team. Just two games in, though, Pacheco suffered a fractured fibula and was placed on injured reserve. The Chiefs signed Hunt off the street, who went on to become a decent fantasy asset.
Pacheco scored 15.8 and 16.1 PPR fantasy points in his two starts. So all is well, right? Well, PPR fantasy points don't always tell the whole story. They're the most predictive stat of next season's scoring, but that's largely because elite players drag the correlation scores up.
We know someone like Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson is elite and will score a lot of points when healthy, so that data is useless. Yet, his scoring "stickiness" is thrown in with the data of far worse players like Pacheco. So it's better to include more data.
Pacheco in Weeks 1-2:
-3.97 YPC (RB26 of 40)
-0 runs of 15+ yds
-0.12 MTF/Att (RB28)
-1.97 YACO/Att (RB29)I think Andy Reid shifts to a committee backfield in 2025. Many might get excited about Elijah Mitchell. I'm not. It's exceedingly rare for 5th year RBs to break out.
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) May 25, 2025
Pacheco, even before his leg injury, wasn't very productive. He averaged under four yards per carry, wasn't explosive, didn't pick up a lot of yards after contact, and struggled to make defenders miss. Admittedly, it was on a small sample size of carries, but the numbers aren't encouraging.
You'd ideally like to see him have improved from one year to the next, but signs pointed to him regressing, and major regression in running back advanced statistics is a great leading indicator of an eventual shift in workload. And any shift would be bad for Pacheco, who enjoyed workhorse volume in 2023.
Many running backs simply don't survive the first season that opposing defenses have good tape on them and spend the offseason preparing their game plans with that back in mind. Later-round draft picks like Pacheco are especially vulnerable to this, as they have more obvious weaknesses in their games that can be exploited.
Pacheco needs better vision & patience pic.twitter.com/WY37i68DZN
— 𝕃𝕠𝕣𝕕ℂ𝕙𝕚𝕖𝕗ℝ𝕠𝕔𝕜𝕒 (@JordanTribe) August 21, 2022
I hate how running backs are praised for their vision on plays where the offensive line is given credit. Pacheco has vision problems, despite the well-blocked plays in which people insist he has great vision on waiting for his blocks to develop.
I don't expect Pacheco to be as productive in 2025 as he was in 2023. It might be tough sledding for those who draft him.
Brashard Smith Fantasy Football Outlook
Smith is an intriguing player. I've labeled him as a potential league winner in fantasy football, though it may take time for that to come to pass in a Chiefs offense that's notorious for working in its rookies very ... slowly ... in their freshman seasons.
We saw wide receiver Rashee Rice not get significant volume until after midseason in his rookie year. I expect the same for Smith. The SMU product's best trait is by far his pass-catching ability, owing to his time as a wide receiver before switching positions.
Former Falcons/Titans WR Harry Douglas says football fans need to “get to know” Chiefs rookie RB Brashard Smith. “He’s lethal and dangerous in their pass game.” @HDouglas83 pic.twitter.com/j3SuF7Vrrf
— Farzin Vousoughian (@Farzin21) August 19, 2025
Smith is exactly what Douglas says -- a potential lethal threat in the passing game. New England Patriots running back TreVeyon Henderson was seen as a fantastic pass-catching running back in college. Smith demolished him in yards per route run.
Running Back draft class career production pic.twitter.com/2HPoYrbOvE
— Football Insights 📊 (@fball_insights) May 8, 2025
Smith's 1.9 YPRR was best in class, a full two-thirds better than Henderson's 1.14 YPRR. It wasn't a close competition. All you have to do is turn on the film to see why. Smith looks like a WR masquerading as a running back, and should be lethal running routes out of the backfield for an offense that LOVES short passes and screens.
#SMU RB Brashard Smith would be a perfect scheme fit for the Broncos as the love-child of Jaleel McLaughlin and prime JuJu Smith-Schuster.
Bonus points for nickname McSchuster? 🤷🏻♂️🧀 pic.twitter.com/cq2JTMqVFE
— The Hot Route (@1v1HotRoute) March 26, 2025
Smith's dual-threat abilities could make him a fantasy juggernaut in the future. He likely has at least major PPR upside because he's, you know, a great receiver, and catches are far more valuable than rushes.
Kareem Hunt Fantasy Football Outlook
There is very little reason to draft Hunt. He's washed. He was carried by his team's offense last season, but he just didn't show anything that made him look like a good running back. He didn't get injured, so that was nice, and he didn't fumble the ball, which was also nice. But that's about it.
Chiefs RB situation 🧵 (data via @FantasyPtsData)
You might think Kareem Hunt is the clear RB2 in KC. Yet in 2024, Hunt logged:-3.64 YPC (RB43 of 46 with 100+ rushes)
-1.5% of rushes > 15+ yds (2nd-last)
-0.08 MTF/Att (dead last)
-1.99 YACon/Att (2nd-last)(cont. below)
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) May 25, 2025
This is another part of the thread I posted above that I think is important. Hunt was awful last season. While he had a pretty solid success rate, owing to the excellent run schemes of head coach Andy Reid, the team's de facto offensive coordinator, Hunt did little to gain extra yardage and forced missed tackles.
There's very little upside here.
Who Should You Draft in Fantasy Football?
Smith. Pacheco is likely to be mired in some kind of committee for stretches of 2025. I believe that Smith has the highest pass-catching upside and has the skills to become the team's lead back. I doubt the team would have drafted him if it intended to hand Pacheco a large contract.
Sharp teams like the Chiefs make good personnel decisions, and it's been a long time since they've had a dominant running back making a lot of money. That's probably a good thing because those players don't tend to help their teams win in the playoffs without an elite offensive line supporting them.
A committee of Smith and another cheap running back is the most likely outcome for the 2026 season, according to my analysis. Stash Smith in dynasty leagues and deep redraft leagues, and keep your eye on his usage in others. He should become a hot waiver wire target later in 2025, at the least.
Who Should I Draft Tool
You can also see the Who Should I Draft tool here.
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