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For the first time in his NFL career, Patrick Mahomes is spending his season sidelined by a major injury. How fast that progress goes will be up to him and his body.<\/p>\n
The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback met with reporters via video call Thursday for the first time since suffering a season-ending torn ACL late in the regular season. The injury has left Mahomes’ availability for the 2026 season in doubt, but he said the rehab is going well and he hopes to be 100% by Week 1:<\/p>\n
\n\n“It’s been going well. Obviously I think it’s a long time – I want to be ready for Week 1. The doctors say I can be, but I can’t predict what will happen during the process. That’s my goal, so I’m going to try to prepare myself to be ready to play in that Week 1 and not have any restrictions. You want to be out there healthy and give us the best chance to win.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\n“Obviously, hopefully I’ll be able to do some things in OTAs and come training camp and hopefully I’ll be able to do a lot there. It’s a long process, but I’m excited about it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Those hopes are consistent with what Rick Burkholder, the Chiefs’ vice president of sports medicine and performance, told reporters last month after Mahomes’ surgery. He released a loose recovery timeline of nine months, which would include a return date of Sept. 15. That’s a few days after the NFL’s season opener, but it’s seriously flawed.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
His comments:<\/p>\n
\n\n“Every player is different. Every game is different. Every position is different. And, traditionally, you go after it hard and you’re very consistent with what you do, you do it quickly. The ballpark for this is nine months. It could be a month or two less, a month or two more. You never know what’s going on and everybody who’s biomechanically designed has to go through it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Mahomes’ knee will not be the only one that needs to heal in the Chiefs organization. The team missed the first playoff game since drafting the future Hall of Famer and is dealing with the effects of aging in a rapidly changing league.<\/p>\n
Among the biggest question marks in Kansas City is what happened at offensive coordinator. Manager Matt Nagy’s contract is up and he has been interviewing for coaching positions for the past few weeks. A comeback seems unlikely, leaving coach Andy Reid to find a replacement.<\/p>\n
Mahomes said he trusts Reid to “have a good plan to bring him in,” and laid out what he wants to see from the team’s next coordinator:<\/p>\n
\n\n“I want someone who loves football, who cares about football, who wants to give everything he can to win, make people accountable and bring new ideas every day. I think that’s something we have to keep doing if we want to continue to be great.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\n“In this league, you have to keep improving and getting better and better. That’s what we’re going to try to do here. I want to get back to that winning culture and be accountable to each other and go out there and play good football every day, practice or game.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Whenever he returns, Mahomes’ talents come in handy while trying to find a coordinator. Reid could take a good look at a familiar face \u2014 maybe Mike Kafka or Eric Bieniemy \u2014 or bring in someone completely new. Whether recruitment is effective can have a major impact on the entire AFC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the first time in his NFL career, Patrick Mahomes is spending his season sidelined by a major injury. How fast that progress goes will be up to him and his body. The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback met with reporters via video call Thursday for the first time since suffering a season-ending torn ACL late …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2073,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions\/2073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}