If recovery had a soundtrack, Patrick Mahomes would probably still be somewhere between the quiet notes and the steady rise of something more assured. A little over three months after the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback suffered a torn ACL and LCL, Mahomes is building a comeback moment brick by brick until it feels almost ordinary again.
The injury started, as these things often do, in a single instant on Dec. 14 against the Los Angeles Chargers. A torn ACL is one thing, but adding an LCL makes it the kind of injury that demands patience in a way elite athletes aren’t exactly wired for. Surgery followed within days and with it, a clock: nine months, give or take, with Week 1 of the 2026 season waiting right at the far edge like a finish line you can see but not quite touch yet.
And still, somehow, Mahomes looks like someone already halfway there. On March 25, he posted a video that felt deceptively simple. It showed him on the practice field, dropping back and throwing. His movement carried that careful, measured quality of someone reacquainting himself with trust, but the ball didn’t seem to notice anything had changed. That is the detail people keep coming back to.
Adam Schefter on Patrick Mahomes’ Path to Recovery
According to Adam Schefter, “He’s certainly progressing and he’s on track right now to be where he is. But as one doctor pointed out to me yesterday, you could look yesterday and see how he’s throwing and see how he’s putting the weight on one leg. He’s not fully back but guess what? He doesn’t need to be fully back today.”
“He needs to be fully back in five and a half months and he’s already made great progress from that torn ACL injury. He certainly is tracking to be ready for the start of the regular season. That’s going to be his goal. He’s going to do everything he can to be back out there.”
Inside Kansas City’s offseason plans, that patience shows up in small, deliberate ways. The expectation is that Mahomes will take part in voluntary practices come May, even if it is in a limited, carefully managed role.
The Chiefs, for their part, are hopeful but not naive. They have added Justin Fields as a kind of insurance policy, a contingency plan that acknowledges reality without conceding to it. Depth matters, which is how Chris Oladokun and Jake Haener enter the picture, too. This is not because anyone expects Mahomes to falter, but because the margin for error in recovery is often invisible until it isn’t.
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However, the prevailing feeling around the situation and the Kansas City QB1 (who had a score of 77.2 on PFSN’s QB Impact Metric in 2025) isn’t anxiety. It is something closer to quiet confidence.
