Patrick Mahomes has a way of making injury updates sound lighter than they are, and that’s been the case all year as the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has kept putting a sunny spin on a serious knee injury. But Jesse Newell of The Athletic got a closer look at Mahomes during his first real appearances at training camp, and the early read goes well beyond the usual upbeat quotes.
One of the clearest signs came in practice work to Mahomes’ left. Newell said Mahomes was part of a group running rollouts in that direction and was clearly favoring the left leg.
That’s not surprising at this stage of the recovery, but it does point to a Chiefs offense that figures to be simplified until Mahomes gets back to his latest version of full mobility. It’s a back-and-forth process right now, with what Mahomes can do and what’s still off limits shaping the plan.
The brace is another part of that adjustment. Mahomes has said wearing one wouldn’t be a big deal, pointing to his Texas Tech days, but Newell noted this is a different setup and a different injury.
In the practices he watched, Mahomes kept reaching over to fix the bulky brace, sometimes with quick tweaks and other times by tugging at multiple straps to get it right. The takeaway was simple: he’s not comfortable in it yet, and that may take a week or two.
There’s also a clear sign of how the offense may look around him. Mahomes is taking more snaps under center, which fits with the idea that Kansas City will lean more on handoffs and whatever motion he can handle from that spot. The Chiefs didn’t pay new running back Kenneth Walker III a boatload of money to make him part of Andy Reid’s motion offense concepts, so the direction here lines up with everything else that’s been said about the team’s offensive plans this season.
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