Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) is done for the season after suffering a left ACL tear against the Los Angeles Chargers on December 14, 2025 at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO. (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
You could say that this has Chiefly been a bad season for Kansas City. And it just got worse with the NFL team losing their chief, quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The 30-year-old QB went down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament injury with less than two minutes remaining in Sunday’s 16-13 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. That loss ended the playoff hopes for the Chiefs. That injury ended the season for Mahomes.
The Worst Injury Of Mahomes Pro Football Career
This is the worst injury that Mahomes has suffered in his nine year pro football career. An MRI conducted after the game confirmed the injury. It’s not yet clear whether Mahomes tore his ACL partially or completely. But early indications are that Mahomes will undergo surgery soon to repair his ACL, suggesting that the tear is more than minor. Recovering and rehabilitating from surgery will keep him participating in much of the Chiefs’ regular offseason stuff. It’s unclear at this point whether he will be back by the start of next season.
The injury occurred when Mahomes was rolling to his right outside the pocket, trying to evade the charge of Charger defensive end Da’Shawn Hand. Right before Hand could get a hand on Mahomes, the QB planted his left foot and threw the ball away. However, in the process of being tackled by Hand, Mahomes’ left knee buckled, leading him to fall to the ground and then grab his left knee while grimacing in pain. That injury must have hurt in many ways. Indeed, Mahomes subsequently posted on X the following:
The ACL Helps Stabilize The Knee Joint
Yeah, ACL injuries kind of suck. I’ve already written about ACL injuries in Forbes when USC Trojans basketball star JuJu Watkins tore hers and Carolina Panthers running back Jonathon Brooks tore his. Your ACL is pretty darn important, serving as one the major ligaments that connect your thigh bone—known as the femur—to your shin bone—known as the tibia. Without a complete ACL to help stabilize your knee, your joint could go a-rocking. That can make it more difficult for you to run, cut or jump.
Mahomes Will Likely Undergo ACL Reconstruction Surgery Soon
An ACL tear doesn’t necessarily require ACL reconstruction, especially if most of your running, cutting and jumping is between the couch and the refrigerator. However, it might be tough for a pro football player like Mahomes to get away without surgery. ACL reconstruction means surgically inserting some type of graft close to where the original ACL was to basically create a new ACL. This graft could be an autograft—not to be confused with an autograph, which would not be very stable—meaning from your own body such as your patella tendon or hamstring tendons. It could also be an allograft, meaning from something outside your body such as the ACL of a cadaver.
Mahomes Will Face A Long Recovery
Surgery is typically not a walk in the part and neither is the recovery, although you will have to a lot of walking. But not immediately. You’ll usually need crutches for the first two weeks or so while allowing the surgical wounds and accompanying inflammation and swelling to heal. Throughout this process, it will be important to continue range of motion exercises for the knee so that things don’t scarred into place.
You’d also be surprised as to how quickly your leg muscles atrophy during this period. Therefore, once your knee is able to tolerate more strenuous exercises, you will have to build back up your quadriceps and hamstrings.
Progression to light jogging typically occurs around the 12-week mark. Then between the three to six month mark, you’ll slowly escalating the sports-specific drills that you are doing. All in all, the earliest you or Mahomes can return to a sport fully is six months, although this could take as long as 12 months after surgery.
The Chiefs Have Been Eliminated From Playoff Contention
This was certainly not what the Chiefs envisioned at the start of this NFL season when they were hoping to make the playoffs for the 11th consecutive season and even become only the second team ever to make the Super Bowl four consecutive years. In fact, last month, the Chiefs were still favored to win Super Bowl LIX. But that was before the Chiefs took some nasty licks over the past 28 days, with three straight losses leaving them with a 6-8 record. That will leave them outside of the NFL playoffs for the first time since the words “selfie” and “twerk” were added to the dictionary.
For Mahomes the focus will be getting himself back on the field. A number of high profile quarterbacks have successfully returned to top form after such an injury. There was Carson Palmer after tearing his left ACL not once but twice in 2005 and 2014, Joe Burrow who tore his in 2020 and Philip Rivers who played on a torn ACL in the January 2008 AFC Championship game and returned the following season. Oh, and some guy named Tom Brady tore his ACL and MCL in 2008. He kind of did pretty well after that, winning multiple Super Bowls and cementing his Hall of Fame career.