As Isiah Pacheco prepares to face the Eagles in the Super Bowl, the town of Vineland has his back

Talk to the folks in Vineland and they’ll tell you that the best way to understand Isiah Pacheco is to understand that he could have left.

Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe they’d still be watching from afar. Maybe they’d still be swooning over a Super Bowl, falling in love with the kid they call Pop. Maybe they’d still be thinking about that day eight months ago when this crazy journey began, when an entire town’s worth of teachers and coaches and neighbors cycled through the Double Eagle Saloon with hugs and well wishes and assurances that he’d get his chance soon. Maybe he’d have still gotten a parade and a key to the city.

It doesn’t really matter now. After all, he stayed.

“That’s who he is,” said Don Robbins, the athletic director at Vineland High School, “a five-tool person.”

Often, the important question isn’t whether a man can go home again. It’s whether anybody at home wants him to. For Pacheco, the answer was written long before he electrified Chiefs training camp as a rookie seventh-round draft pick, long before he worked his way to the top of the depth chart at running back, long before he became the breakout star of the NFL postseason while helping lead Andy Reid to an improbable Super Bowl showdown against his hometown Eagles.

It was nearly a decade ago that the big Philly-area preps and parochials caught wind of the teenage dynamo who was dominating middle school fields up and down State Route 55. Vineland, a crossroads town of 61,000 people halfway between the Walt Whitman Bridge and the Shore, was hardly a football hotbed. You had to go all the way back to Lou Piccone in the late 1960s to find a local talent who’d made it to the pros.

But Pacheco was different. He had the speed; he had the frame, and he darn sure had the desire. Dan Russo was in his first year as the head football coach at Vineland High when his phone rang.

“His youth football coach called and said, ‘Hey, you gotta check this guy out,’ ” Russo recalls. “He was scoring four, five touchdowns a game.”

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Word of Pacheco’s exploits quickly escaped Cumberland County. According to local legend, the list of suitors who made their interest known included many of the region’s most recognizable institutions. All of them with athletic programs far more accomplished and alumni networks far more robust than any that Vineland could offer its fledgling star. For a working-class kid with dreams of a big-time college scholarship, the visibility and resources afforded by such programs must have seemed impossible to turn down. But on the first day of freshman camp, there Pacheco was, walking brashly up to Vineland’s long-time equipment manager to demand a practice jersey with the No. 1.

“I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Joe Pettit says with a chuckle.

Nothing that has happened since has caught any of them by surprise. Halfway through his four years as a dual-threat quarterback and team captain, Pacheco decided he wanted to play varsity baseball.

“He hadn’t played the sport in two years,” said Kyle Jones, then an assistant. “He came out for the team and made All-State.”

Four years later, Pacheco again decided he couldn’t leave home, accepting a scholarship offer to Rutgers, where he transitioned to running back. Despite the firing of coach Chris Ash and the uncertainty of the 2020 COVID pandemic, Pacheco never thought of entering the transfer portal.

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“I wanted to be remembered as a player,” Pacheco said on Monday. “I didn’t want to be remembered as a number. “I could have gone somewhere else and transferred and just been a number. I wanted to be remembered as a leader at Rutgers who stuck there and fought through adversity and did whatever I had to do to allow my teammates to trust me.”

Could he have garnered more attention elsewhere? Perhaps. Pacheco finished his career at Rutgers with 2,442 yards on 563 carries, never gaining more than 729 yards in a season. Despite running a position-best 4.37 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine, he entered the NFL Draft as a fringe Day 3 pick.

Vineland? It knew better. On draft day, Pacheco returned home and the whole town turned out. The party started at Eastlyn Golf Course and then it went to the Double Eagle Saloon. When the call finally came from the Chiefs in the seventh round, the party moved to Pacheco’s house.

“There were some nervous moments,” Pettit says. “He stayed positive. He just kept waiting his turn.”

The energy was infectious, and it remains that way. Throughout Chiefs training camp, Pacheco drew praise for his upbeat attitude and willingness to learn.

In Kansas City’s season-opening win over Arizona, the rookie scored a touchdown and rushed for 62 yards.

“He’s an Energizer Bunny guy,” Reid said on Tuesday. “He’s got endless energy and you see it when he’s on the field playing, you see it at practice, that’s who is.”

He is a couple of thousand miles away from Vineland now, an NFL starter coming off a regular season in which he rushed for 830 yards on 170 carries. In the Chiefs’ two postseason wins, he has tallied 186 yards from scrimmage and one epic end zone dance.

“He’s one of the best rookies that I’ve seen come in,” Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce said.

He has a long future in front of him. More importantly, he has an entire town at his back. Late last spring, a month before the draft, Pacheco returned home and made an appearance at a pep rally for Vineland’s spring sports teams. At one point during the proceedings, Vineland assistant principal Kim Rivera pulled him aside to thank him.

“I’ll always remember my home, Rivera,” Pacheco responded.

She’s an Eagles season ticket holder. But you can guess who she’ll be rooting for.

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