LAS VEGAS — Puerto Rican pride became part of the elation after the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl win.
Kansas City Chiefs’ running back Isiah Pacheco draped himself in a Puerto Rican flag Sunday night to celebrate the team’s third Super Bowl victory in just five years.
The two-time Super Bowl titleholder — whose father hails from Ponce, Puerto Rico — is unabashedly proud of his roots. At last year’s Super Bowl, Pacheco wore a helmet featuring the iconic flag of the Caribbean island, now memorialized in the NFL Hall of Fame. Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S.
“I feel amazing,” Pacheco told Telemundo Deportes in English, after the victory on Sunday. “Mind, body and soul. Eliminated distractions. It took all 53 of us tonight to get the job done.”
Pacheco was born the youngest of five in Vineland, New Jersey, and his mother is of Dominican heritage, according to Pro Football Network.
He was recruited to play football for Rutgers University in 2017 and made his NFL debut after being drafted by the Chiefs in 2022. Pacheco has played in every game since then.
“It’s the hard work you put in, during season, at practice,” Pacheco said. “When something happens, you’re going through adversity, you shake it off. Next play.”
At the Super Bowl LVIII, Pacheco was vying for the title against a team with another player of Puerto Rican descent — San Francisco 49ers’ offensive lineman Jon Feliciano, whose father is from Añasco, Puerto Rico.
By EMI TUYETNHI TRAN/NBC News