Patrick Mahomes Fully Cleared to Practice at Chiefs Training Camp: Kansas City’s Superstar Is Back Ahead of Schedule
Patrick Mahomes is cleared. Cleared to practice, cleared for team drills, and by every indication cleared to be on the field for the Kansas City Chiefs when Week 1 kicks off.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid announced on Friday, the first day of training camp, that Mahomes has been fully cleared to participate in all practice activities. The three-time Super Bowl champion suffered a torn ACL and LCL in his left knee during a Week 15 game against the Los Angeles Chargers last December. He is now roughly seven months into recovery.
Getting cleared this early is not just a good sign. It is a franchise-altering one.
Mahomes Says He Feels Amazing
Mahomes spoke to reporters Friday and used the word amazing to describe how he feels. His body has responded well to the aggressive rehab schedule he set in the offseason. The rehab was intense from the moment he had surgery in late December, and he has been visible around the facility for months in various stages of recovery.
He will start training camp wearing a brace on the surgically repaired knee. That is standard protocol for a player at his stage of recovery. The brace comes off gradually as confidence builds and the medical staff signs off. By preseason, expect the brace to be gone.
Reid described himself as optimistic that Mahomes will be ready for Week 1. Reid does not use words like optimistic loosely. If he thought there was serious doubt, he would have said the team was still evaluating things. The message is clear: Mahomes is going to play in the season opener.
What This Means for the Chiefs
Kansas City spent the second half of last season with Blaine Gabbert running the offense. That went about as well as you would expect. The Chiefs finished 9-8, missed the playoffs for the first time in nearly a decade, and watched the Bills, Ravens and Bengals reclaim the AFC hierarchy.
A healthy Mahomes reverses all of that. This is still one of the deepest rosters in the AFC. Travis Kelce is back. Isiah Pacheco is healthy. The offensive line got upgrades in the draft. The defense returns most of its key contributors, and Steve Spagnuolo remains one of the sharpest coordinators in football.
Give Mahomes a full training camp with his weapons, and the Chiefs immediately become the team to beat in the AFC West and one of the top three contenders in the entire conference. Nobody in Kansas City is celebrating a return trip to the Super Bowl yet, but the runway is officially clear.
The Chiefs Have to Manage the Reps
Being cleared and being ready to take a full training camp workload are two different things. Reid and the medical staff will almost certainly limit Mahomes early. Expect individual work, half-speed team drills, and light contact in the first two weeks. The full unrestricted workload probably arrives closer to the second preseason game.
That approach is fine. Nobody actually needs Mahomes to grind through 30 practice reps in a joint session with the Vikings in mid-August. The point is to build confidence, sharpen the timing with his receivers and get his football body back in shape without adding unnecessary risk.
The season starts September 10 when the Chiefs open on the road. Kansas City has plenty of time. Mahomes will be ready. And the AFC just got significantly more terrifying with a fully healthy Patrick Mahomes running the show again.
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.
