ST. JOSEPH, Mo. – The last time Patrick Mahomes dropped back in an 11-on-11 drill was a December Sunday in San Diego, before the ball left his hand and the left knee buckled underneath him. Seven months later, on a practice field at Missouri Western State University, he did it again.
He did it more than once. Mahomes worked through seven-on-seven reps, stepped into 11-on-11 sequences, moved inside the pocket and outside it, and planted on a reconstructed left knee that a brace now wraps at every session. When practice ended, head coach Andy Reid spoke in the measured language of someone who had been watching closely. “He did everything, which is a positive,” Reid told reporters Wednesday. “He looked pretty good today. You can see the strength in his legs, which is important with a leg injury. His feet are moving well.”
That it requires careful language tells you something about where Kansas City still stands. The Chiefs finished 6-11 last season, the franchise’s worst record since the Mahomes era began and the first time since 2014 they watched January football from somewhere other than the field. Mahomes himself, earlier in camp, acknowledged the collapse went beyond the physical. “I felt like I wasn’t playing my best football at the end of last year before I got hurt,” he said, the kind of self-assessment that does not fit neatly into a conversation about ligament reconstruction.
He has spent seven months trying to address both problems at once. The lifting numbers are there. “I feel stronger than I’ve ever felt, as far as strength and lifting and stuff like that,” Mahomes said, adding quickly that the harder work is football-specific movement, the pocket footwork, the quick release, the split-second laterals that make pass rushers miss in ways no weight room can simulate. “Now it’s just about getting that quarterback stuff down. Moving in the pocket quick, making those quick movements, reacting.”
The brace on his left knee is visible on every snap. Dr. Dan Cooper, who performed surgery following the Week 15 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, cleared Mahomes to practice days before camp opened, after reviewing the rebuilding work on the ACL and LCL that ended his 2025 season and Kansas City’s playoff hopes together. According to Yahoo Sports, the Chiefs plan to keep Mahomes out of all three preseason games, a first for the quarterback at this stage of a training camp. What the reconstructed knee does when a defensive lineman gets through and puts him on the ground is the one question no drill in St. Joseph can settle in advance.
The subplot that nobody was expecting in St. Joseph came from a fifth-round rookie wide receiver. Cyrus Allen worked himself into Mahomes’ line of sight early and stayed there. Reid was specific about what he saw develop. “Cyrus had a good day today with him, and I think Pat’s got some trust there,” Reid said, according to Bleacher Report. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve just got to keep going, keep growing.” Trust, deployed by Reid in the first week of full-team camp, is a word he uses carefully. Its appearance alongside a fifth-round pick and a quarterback re-learning his footwork is either early signal or coincidence, and probably both.
Travis Kelce, entering his 14th NFL season after an offseason that pulled him toward other obligations more than once, was back and sharp in practice. The connection between Mahomes and Kelce, the one that has been the operational center of Kansas City’s dynasty across four Super Bowl runs, showed up intact in early reps. The Chiefs posted video of the pair working together, the kind of footage calibrated for maximum reassurance. What it is not is November contact. It is not supposed to be yet.
Receiver Rashee Rice, recovering from knee surgery in May, was described by the team as doing great and progressing toward what Kansas City hopes is a full-season return. Top pick Mansoor Delane, the No. 6 overall selection, practiced but wore a non-contact jersey because of a shoulder issue, complicating the timeline on what was supposed to be the most straightforward of the Chiefs’ offseason investments. Across the league’s first days of camp, an ACL tear in New Orleans ended defensive lineman Bryan Bresee’s season before it began, a bleak contrast to what Kansas City was cautiously celebrating in St. Joseph.
What the NFL handed Kansas City this year, regardless of the uncertainty, was a primetime schedule that says the league still believes in the Mahomes effect even after a losing season. Six standalone games, including a Week 1 Monday Night opener against the Denver Broncos, reflect an assumption that Kansas City remains one of the sport’s essential attractions. Whether that assumption holds depends on answers that come in October and November, against pass rushers on real game days, on a knee that has not faced live contact since Dr. Cooper rebuilt it in December.
Mahomes put the simplest frame on what he is after in St. Joseph. “You just have to build that confidence back,” he said, “and I’m glad I get to do that from Day 1.” The fans who had been briefly evacuated from Missouri Western’s practice grounds that morning when storm weather swept through were let back in before the final reps ended. Most of them stood at the fence for the last 11-on-11 session. What they came to see was the same thing Reid came to evaluate: a quarterback who looked like himself. For now, in a brace, in July, that is what they got.
