Will Patrick Mahomes Be Ready for Week 1? Chiefs QB’s ACL Recovery Hits Make-or-Break Phase
Patrick Mahomes is six months removed from tearing his ACL and LCL, and the entire NFL is watching how he heals. The Chiefs quarterback suffered the injury on December 14, 2025, in a Week 15 loss to the Chargers, and his return for Week 1 of the 2026 season is no longer guaranteed.
The Chiefs have been positive in public. Mahomes has been rehabbing aggressively. Reports out of Kansas City say he has shown real progress. But the truth is that even the best ACL recoveries can take 9 to 12 months, and Mahomes is now in the window where teams typically start making hard decisions.
If he is not ready by training camp, the entire Chiefs season looks different.
Why This Injury Is So Tricky
An ACL tear by itself is hard enough. Adding an LCL tear makes the recovery longer and the rehab more complicated. The LCL helps stabilize the outside of the knee, and players returning from that combo often need extra time to feel comfortable cutting and planting in the open field.
For a quarterback, the leg stuff matters more than people realize. Mahomes plays the position like a creator. He scrambles. He throws off platform. He extends plays with his legs. If he is the slightest bit hesitant on his plant foot, his accuracy and decision-making both suffer.
That is the worry. Not whether he can stand in the pocket and complete passes by September. Whether he can be the Mahomes everyone knows by then. Those are two different bars.
What the Chiefs Will Do
Andy Reid is not going to rush him. The Chiefs need Mahomes for January, not September. Pushing him onto the field at 80 percent in Week 1 risks another setback that costs them the entire season. The smart move is patience.
That puts the backup quarterback in a serious spot. The Chiefs need someone who can keep the team afloat for a few weeks if needed. The roster is loaded enough to survive a short stretch of average quarterback play, but anything beyond a month and the AFC race tilts hard.
The Chiefs have been the standard in football for half a decade. Two Super Bowl titles. Multiple AFC titles. Every single one of those runs started with Mahomes being available. The 2026 season is the first time in a long time that nobody can guarantee that he will be.
Training camp opens in late July. That is the next big checkpoint. If Mahomes is taking snaps and looking sharp, the league should panic. If he is on the sidelines watching practice with a sleeve on, the rest of the AFC has the opening it has been waiting for.
The whole NFL is going to be tracking the Chiefs quarterback’s right knee for the next eight weeks. The 2026 season may already hinge on it.
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.
