Patrick Mahomes Details Offseason Recovery From Ankle Injury
The Kansas City Chiefs are starting phase one of their offseason program on Monday, with quarterback Patrick Mahomes taking the lead on offense and having already done some work with his receiving corps. That work will continue over the next several days, but an underrated storyline is Mahomes's ongoing recovery from a high-ankle sprain.
Mahomes suffered the injury during the Chiefs' Divisional Round win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, playing through it in the AFC Championship Game and the Super Bowl. He threw for a combined five touchdowns in those two contests, ultimately winning Super Bowl MVP after appearing to tweak the ailment in-game. Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid both agreed at the end of the season that the ankle sprain wouldn't restrict the 27-year-old quarterback much during the offseason and on Monday, Mahomes provided an update.
"Yeah, I think now it's been more about just kind of managing it but getting the mobility back the best I possibly can," Mahomes said. "I wouldn't say I'm 100, 100% but I haven't had necessarily any limitations. It's just when you go through the grind of a week of training and you're trying to push it and go through the rehab process but at the same time, you want to make sure you're still building, you might be a little sore on the weekends. But I think we've done a great job of pushing it to the right limit to where now I'm throwing and stuff like that and having no limitations there. I think [with] running and cutting, there will still be a little bit of limitation going the next few weeks, but I'm happy with where I'm at."
High-ankle sprains oftentimes take multiple weeks for players to recover from, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise considering Mahomes has been testing the injury out on a weekly (and likely daily) basis. This is the second time that he's suffered a significant ankle injury, although he played through it both times and maintained world-class efficiency under center while doing so for Kansas City. With receivers down in Texas to work out with him, he hasn't appeared to be too limited. When asked how this compares to his 2021 foot injury that required surgery, Mahomes said they're not very similar at all:
"I felt like the foot was way more serious, I guess you would say, than the ankle has been," Mahomes said. "The foot, with having the surgery and having that cast on, it really cut my mobility down a lot. I had to really work through that even into the season that next year. With the ankle, I felt like we've improved — especially these last few weeks — a ton. The swelling has went down finally and I don't have that soreness just as much as I was having it after a few days of work."
The lack of a true offseason heading into the 2021-22 campaign was a legitimate obstacle for Mahomes, a quarterback whose games involves plenty of timing-based and off-schedule production alike. His footwork and drop depth in the pocket are constant areas of emphasis for him, so not being able to practice as often — or how he wanted to — left him behind the proverbial eight-ball throughout the spring and summer months. Now fully on the mend from his high-ankle sprain, Mahomes thinks it'll be a thing of the past by the time training camp arrives.
"We'll continue to work through it," Mahomes said "In OTAs, I don't think there will be any limitations on reps or anything like that. Especially because I'm not running around a ton. But at the same time, we'll continue the rehab process and making sure that by the time we get to training camp, I can just roll out there and feel perfectly fine."
