Patrick Mahomes is back on the practice field with no restrictions, seven months after Dr. Dan Cooper reconstructed the ACL and LCL in his left knee. The Chiefs’ two-time MVP visited Cooper in Dallas earlier this week, hit every benchmark, and reported to Missouri Western State University on time for the start of training camp.
He’ll be wearing a brace on that left knee when practice begins — not because anyone told him to, but because he’s been there before.
“There isn’t really a plan for it,” Mahomes said Friday. “I’m going to start off with it just because I’ve worn it before and I feel comfortable with it. So that’s kind of where we will start, but it’s not like I’ve been told I have to wear it or how long I have to wear it. It’s just going to be my comfortability, how I feel. But I will start with it on just because I feel like I can still move and be myself with it. I played with it in college and then we’ll just see where we go from there.”
The college reference dates to 2015, when Mahomes suffered a knee injury against TCU at Texas Tech and played through it braced. Andy Reid confirmed the clearance carries no caveats: “He’s been cleared to go ahead and participate full. Pat’s doing great.” Reid added that he’ll evaluate Mahomes daily, and that preseason participation — the opener is Aug. 15 against the Rams — remains undecided.
The injury came Dec. 14 in a Week 15 loss to the Chargers. Surgery followed the next day. Rather than retreat to his Texas home for the offseason, Mahomes stayed at the Chiefs’ facility and ground through rehab. He picked up the phone, too — texting Tom Brady, who tore his own knee ligaments in 2009, to ask how the recovery changed specific quarterback movements. “He just talked about the process of it and how he changed little things here and there to make himself even better,” Mahomes said. Former teammate Tyrann Mathieu, who suffered the same dual-ligament tear, offered guidance as well.
The most unexpected rehab partner was Eagles tight end Zach Ertz, who tore his ACL on Dec. 7 — a week before Mahomes. The two traded videos of deadlifts, sprints, and agility work, each trying to outdo the other. “Having someone just as competitive as I am that’s kind of going through the same thing was something that kind of kept me going,” Mahomes said.
Here’s where the picture sharpens. The Chiefs went 6-11 last season and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014 — the worst year of the Mahomes era. He set a career high with 422 rushing attempts despite missing three games, a number he acknowledged was too high: “I ran a little too much last season.” The Broncos, who took the AFC West while Kansas City sat home, arrive at Arrowhead on Sept. 14 for a Monday night Week 1 showdown that the league office clearly scheduled with Mahomes’ return in mind. Justin Fields waits as the insurance policy if the timeline slips.
The brace, then, is the least dramatic part of this story. Mahomes is cleared with no limits, medically approved to ditch the brace whenever he chooses, and facing a schedule that treats his return as a certainty. The only real question is whether the knee holds up under the kind of chaos he creates outside the pocket — and whether a quarterback who just signed an eight-year, $504.75 million extension will rein in the scrambling that put him in a brace in the first place.
Rookies, quarterbacks, and injured players begin practice Saturday. Full-squad work starts next week. Mahomes plans to be out there for all of it.
