Chiefs Kingdom can breathe a little.
Patrick Mahomes remains on track to return for Kansas City’s Week 1 Monday Night Football opener against the Denver Broncos, according to multiple reports out of Chiefs camp this week. He is not 100 percent. He may not be back to full speed until midway through the season. But he is going to be under center on opening night, which is more than a lot of people thought possible six months ago.
Mahomes tore his ACL and LCL in December against the Los Angeles Chargers. It was the kind of injury that ends seasons for most quarterbacks and sometimes derails careers. He had surgery within a week and started rehab immediately. Since then, the Chiefs have been almost obsessive about controlling the flow of information around his recovery.
What we know: Mahomes worked through 7-on-7 drills at the Chiefs’ mandatory minicamp in early June but did not participate in any full 11-on-11 team drills. He has been running, cutting, and throwing off-platform in individual sessions. The team is expected to bring him along slowly through the first two weeks of training camp before letting him take snaps against the full defense.
The critical test is the moment he plants his repaired left knee at full speed and cuts without hesitation. That is when this recovery becomes real. Mahomes has passed every rehabilitation checkpoint, but there is a mental piece to coming back from a torn ACL that no MRI can measure. He needs to trust the knee.
Andy Reid is going to be smart about how he uses Mahomes in preseason. Expect him to see very little action, maybe a series or two in the second preseason game against Miami. The plan is to protect him at all costs until the regular season starts.
The Chiefs’ floor without Mahomes at full strength is still pretty high. Travis Kelce is back for his final season. Rashee Rice has looked electric in offseason work. Xavier Worthy is entering year three and expected to break out. The offensive line is one of the best units in football. And the defense, anchored by Chris Jones and rookie corner Will Johnson, is a Super Bowl-level unit.
But the Chiefs are the Chiefs because Mahomes is the Chiefs. Without him, they are a solid playoff team. With him, they are the AFC favorites. The gap between those two versions of Kansas City is why every practice report out of St. Joseph is being combed over like it is intelligence briefings on a foreign election.
The good news is that everything is trending the right way. Mahomes has said publicly that Week 1 is his goal. Reid has said publicly that Week 1 is realistic. Team doctors have signed off on the plan. And Chiefs fans, who spent the second half of last season watching Blaine Gabbert and Chad Henne, are counting the days until they see 15 back on the field.
September 14 in Denver. Monday Night Football. National television. That is when we find out if Mahomes is really back.
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.
