Culture
Running with rage, Isiah Pacheco has energized the Chiefs' rushing attack in the playoffs
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — His hands balled into fists and his biceps flexed, running back Isiah Pacheco stomped along the Kansas City Chiefs’ sideline, his message accentuated by his demonstrative voice.
“Ay, bring that f—— energy!” Pacheco screamed at his offensive teammates, many of them nodding in agreement. “Bring that s—! Bring that s—!”
A few minutes later, the Chiefs began the second half of their divisional-round playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, the first time Pacheco had played a road elimination game in his young, two-year career. With the Chiefs trailing by four points, Pacheco helped them score touchdowns on back-to-back drives by doing what has made him one of the NFL’s most distinctive players: Whenever he touched the ball, he ran with rage, intensity and brutality.
Pacheco’s running style was instrumental in the Chiefs advancing to the AFC Championship Game for the sixth consecutive season. He led all players with 97 rushing yards on 15 attempts, a sizable amount of those yards gained after the first defender made contact with him.
Sixty percent of Pacheco’s carries ended with him going over the expected yardage, according to the NFL Next Gen Stats, the highest percentage of any qualified running back in the divisional round.
GO DEEPER
How explosive plays have rejuvenated the Chiefs’ chances of winning back-to-back Super Bowls
When Pacheco entered the end zone on his 4-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter, which proved to be the game-winning score, he shouted another message to left tackle Donovan Smith and tight end Travis Kelce.
“They can’t f— with us!” Pacheco said. He continued to encourage his teammates when he reached the sideline, saying “Everything you got! Everything you got!”
“We’re gonna make it quiet today!”
10 was on the mic for our divisional dub 🎙️ pic.twitter.com/bZOtjEYBz6
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) January 24, 2024
In the Chiefs’ two postseason victories, over the Bills and Miami Dolphins, Pacheco has backed up his words with dominant performances.
His teammates have elevated their play, too. The Chiefs’ rushing attack, a part of the offense that was inconsistent at times during the regular season, has been exceptional in the playoffs. The offensive linemen — Smith, left guard Joe Thuney, center Creed Humphrey, right guard Trey Smith, right tackle Jawaan Taylor and backup guard Nick Allegretti — have been the superior group in the trenches. And the Chiefs’ three tight ends — Kelce, Noah Gray and Blake Bell — have all improved their blocking.
“I’m proud of how resilient the guys have been,” Humphrey said. “We’ve gotten through a little bit of a slump, but the guys kept pressing and we’ve improved, which is really good to see.”
Entering the playoffs, offensive coordinator Matt Nagy and quarterback Patrick Mahomes acknowledged that the Chiefs offense would need to have a more simplified approach in the postseason to limit mistakes. The easiest way for coach Andy Reid and Nagy to accomplish that was to give Pacheco a larger role in the offense by increasing his workload. Pacheco’s 39 rushing attempts in the playoffs are the most he has had this season in a two-game stretch. He has been effective with those touches, too, producing 186 yards and two touchdowns — and eight rushes of 8 yards or more.
“I thought we did OK during the (regular season) with opportunities, but (offensive line coach) Andy Heck does a heck of a job with designing the runs, and the guys have executed them,” Reid said. “The offensive line takes a lot of pride in doing what they do. They know it starts with them and they’ve been very accurate with their blocking assignments.”
GO DEEPER
Chiefs revel in road victory in front of raucous Bills fans: ‘The environment was crazy’
Even in the fourth-coldest game in NFL history, with the temperature minus-4 degrees at kickoff at Arrowhead Stadium against the Dolphins, Pacheco still ran the ball with rugged aggression through multiple defenders, including his 3-yard touchdown. His highlights led many fans on social media to make exaggerated comparisons when watching him perform.
Before Wednesday’s practice, Pacheco shared his favorite.
“The funniest one, I thought, was when they say I run like I bite people,” Pacheco said, smiling and laughing. “I ain’t no zombie. Like, that was crazy. It’s a great opinion to have, I guess. For me, it’s just being determined and understanding that I have a goal to achieve.”
Glad @isiah_pachecoRB is aware of the memes about his running style 😂 pic.twitter.com/LgA8WeN1bV
— NFL (@NFL) January 24, 2024
Just a month ago, Pacheco missed two games because he sustained another right shoulder injury, the same shoulder he injured during the Chiefs’ postseason run last year. He had what Reid described as a “clean-up” surgery, an arthroscopic procedure, before returning to the lineup on Christmas Day.
Since then, Pacheco has altered his routine after practice, ensuring he receives as much treatment as he can from the team’s medical staff.
“Last year was the longest season in my career, so understanding it’s the second year, there was no offseason for me,” Pacheco said. “I had surgery, so it’s been an ongoing (process). I (have) stayed longer in the building, being one of the last guys to leave.”
GO DEEPER
How Chiefs, 49ers, Lions and Ravens exorcised demons to reach conference title games
Pacheco didn’t participate in Wednesday’s practice because of a sprained toe, a decision Reid made as a precaution. Pacheco expects to play Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens and understands he could have 2o carries against the NFL’s top-ranked defense, which has allowed just 16.3 points per game.
“It’s very important to protect the ball,” said Pacheco, who has fumbled only once in five postseason games. “That’s the biggest part of the game, knowing the team knows you’re going to run it.”
THIS TOUCHDOWN IS A 10/10 😤 pic.twitter.com/IErEnUKWkp
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) January 22, 2024
Pacheco knows the ideal situation for him and the offensive linemen for Sunday’s game: A final drive in the fourth quarter where the mission is to gain the first down that would secure a victory and send the Chiefs to Super Bowl LVIII.
After Bills kicker Tyler Bass missed a potential game-tying 44-yard field goal following the two-minute warning Sunday, the Chiefs still needed to gain another first down to exhaust all of their opponent’s timeouts. Pacheco ran through two defenders to gain 8 yards on first down. The Chiefs gained the game’s final first down on the next play, a 3-yard run up the middle by Pacheco.
“That’s what you want to do in that situation, let the coaches be able to put it on our shoulders up front,” Humphrey said of the offensive line. “I’m really proud of how the guys executed those two plays. Pop running really hard was awesome to see, too.”
Pacheco’s final two rushing attempts looked like his previous 13 in the game, full of determination, ferocity and hostility.
Before Pacheco left the podium Wednesday, a reporter asked a question he has heard before: Are you really angry when you’re running with the ball?
“Absolutely!” Pacheco quickly responded. “I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to get the job done.”
(Photo: Kathryn Riley / Getty Images)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
-
Louisiana4 minutes agoLouisiana agencies urge hurricane preparation ahead of season start
-
Maine7 minutes agoMaine veterans find closure, connection on Honor Flight to D.C.
-
Maryland12 minutes agoMaryland Lt. Gov. responds to ballot error saying ‘It happens almost in every election’
-
Michigan19 minutes agoMichigan Football loses commitment from 2027 safety recruit
-
Massachusetts22 minutes agoMarkey wins Mass. Dems’ endorsement as Moulton clears ballot hurdle in Senate race
-
Minnesota27 minutes agoMN fraud: Medicaid providers face removal as validation deadline passes
-
Mississippi34 minutes agoMississippi State advances to Super Regionals with 7-homer rout of Louisiana
-
Missouri37 minutes ago11 Best Golf Courses in Missouri
