Isiah Pacheco Out Until December for Lions After Back Surgery, 12-Week Recovery Expected
Detroit signed Isiah Pacheco for one year and $1.81 million. Pacheco just had back surgery, will not be back until December, and started the season on injured reserve.
The money was never the risk. The plan was.
Pacheco underwent surgery for a back injury suffered during training camp, and the recovery is expected to take 12 weeks, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. The procedure removed a piece that was pressing on a nerve in his back. That is not a tweak or a maintenance day. That is a real operation on a 27-year-old running back’s spine.
He also sustained an MCL sprain during camp, which means the fifth-year back arrived in Detroit and immediately stacked two significant injuries before playing a snap that counted.
The contract was smart. The depth chart was not.
Give the Lions this: $1.81 million on a one-year deal is about as close to risk-free as free agency gets. If Pacheco gives them anything in December and January, the deal pays for itself. If he gives them nothing, the cap hit is noise.
The problem is what the signing was supposed to do. Detroit traded David Montgomery and brought in Pacheco as the replacement and as a running mate for Jahmyr Gibbs. That is not a depth signing. That is a role, and the role was load-bearing.
You do not move on from a back like Montgomery and then plan to cover the position with a one-year, $1.81 million flier unless you are very confident that flier is going to be healthy. Detroit was confident. Detroit was wrong.
Now the Lions get to spend the next three months finding out how much of the offense was built around having two backs and how much was built around Gibbs being Gibbs.
December is later than it sounds
A 12-week recovery window from a back procedure is not a return to form. It is a return to availability. Pacheco is not expected back until December, and the version of him who walks back into the building at that point will have missed all of training camp, all of the preseason, and roughly three months of the regular season.
Running backs who miss that much time do not usually show up in Week 14 as finished products. If Detroit gets meaningful contributions from him in the final stretch, that is a bonus rather than a plan.
Which brings this back to the real evaluation. The Lions made a low-cost bet on a back coming off an injury-interrupted camp, and the bet did not come in. That happens. Front offices make a dozen of these a year and most of them are forgotten by November.
The one that will be remembered is the Montgomery decision, because that is the move that made Pacheco’s health matter. Detroit can absorb $1.81 million. It has to survive without the player the $1.81 million was supposed to replace.
Pacheco’s timeline gives the Lions a December target and nothing before it. Plan accordingly, and do not expect a healthy scratch’s worth of production the week he is activated.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.