The Kansas City Chiefs have four talented running backs on the 53-man roster — Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Jerick McKinnon, Ronald Jones and Isiah Pacheco. With the need for seven inactive players for games, it’s highly unlikely that all four players will be active come Sunday.
So how will the playing time and snaps shake out between all of these players during the course of the 2022 NFL season? Chiefs HC Andy Reid spoke about his plans at the running back position for Week 1 and beyond on Monday. Reid noted that special teams will play a role in determining who plays and who doesn’t.
“Yeah, we’ll just see how it goes for who is up and who is down,” Reid told reporters. “Some of it will depend on special teams and play there, but if they’re all up they’ll have an opportunity to play some football. If they’re not then whoever is up — they’ll definitely be three of them up — and they’ll touch the football.”
Of the team’s four running backs, Pacheco (15) and McKinnon (8) were the only two players to play special teams snaps during the preseason. Edwards-Helaire and Jones didn’t play a single snap on special teams. Jones has just 98 career snaps on special teams and hasn’t played an NFL snap on special teams since 2019.
Pacheco was the team’s starting kick returner throughout the preseason and that’s expected to persist through the regular season. You can expect him to be active for Week 1.
McKinnon played 37% of the special teams snaps for Dave Toub’s unit last season — a unit that lost over 1,400 special teams snaps in free agency this year. I expect that Toub will want McKinnon suited up for Sunday because of that fact.
That leaves Edwards-Helaire and Jones — and we all know who is winning that battle. Right now, it looks as if Jones will start the season as a healthy scratch unless there is a late injury in the practice week or the team decides to go a different route with its inactive players.
