Uncanny as Patrick Mahomes seems, knee rehab reminds us he’s still human
When Patrick Mahomes somewhat preposterously was on the verge of returning from a hideous dislocated kneecap injury only three weeks later in 2019, I suggested to his teammate and friend Gehrig Dieter that Mahomes might be some sort of mutant capable of regenerating his own limbs.
“He’s a special type of human,” Dieter said with a laugh.
More seriously, Dieter added that Mahomes faces any obstacle by attacking it “in a different way than most people do. His injury is in the way of him playing. So he does whatever he can do to get past that.”
Between that tale and how the irrepressible Mahomes summoned mind over matter with his ankle in Super Bowl LVII, surgery for turf toe and other injuries that likely would have been debilitating to most mortals, it was easy to assume best-case scenarios when it came to the season-ending knee injury he suffered in a Week 15 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
Heck, Mahomes had wanted to go back in the game despite having suffered a torn ACL and LCL in his left knee that required surgery he’d undergo the next day.
And a couple days after that, Chiefs vice president of sports medicine and performance Rick Burkholder set the “ballpark” for his return at nine months — albeit noting it also could be “a month or two less, a month or two more” because “everybody’s designed differently, biomechanically.”
But for all of Mahomes’ biomechanical gifts, for all the presumptions that, presto, he’ll just make it so, the truth is that there are no shortcuts in the grueling grind to get back to being himself.
Something he still aims to do by the time the Chiefs open the season against Denver on Sept. 14.
But something he acknowledges is not all in his control even as he keeps hitting the right checkpoints along the way yet still isn’t running and cutting and able to protect himself.
If Mahomes can’t predict the future, as he said, anyone claiming they know his timetable better is only guessing.
The best that can be said, really, is so far, so good.
But it hasn’t gone perfectly, he said, encouraged as he might be that when he reviews video of himself in weeks past he knows he’s steadily making progress.
To this point, though, coach Andy Reid’s feeling in those days after Mahomes’ injury — “I don’t put anything past him” — has been validated. And when Reid hears people say he’s ahead of schedule, he thinks: “Who made the schedule?”
Because everybody’s different, he added. And no doubt the way Mahomes goes about this is its own special form of different.
“Most guys,” Reid said, “wouldn’t be able to do this.”
Just the same, it’s too easy to forget that the struggle is real even for the seemingly superhuman Mahomes — and easy to not appreciate what this is taking to get through.
According to Psychology Today, for instance, “it’s natural to feel deeply psychologically impacted by sports injury and frustrated by the recovery process.” Such injuries, it wrote, can affect mental health overall, including identity and mood.
When all of this started, I reflexively figured Mahomes’ greatest challenge simply was going to be restraining himself. And while to a certain degree that might be true, the flip side of that is that it’s such an arduous process that Mahomes quite often has to be pushed like anyone else would need to be.
Take it from Mahomes, who once again is most directly working with assistant athletic trainer Julie Frymyer informed in consultation with Burkholder and surgeon Daniel Cooper.
“I’ve known her for so long, and I trust her so much,” Mahomes said after being back on the field for the first time since the injury as a limited participant during this week’s offseason program sessions.
Because of that, Mahomes said, he buys into her approach to him much as he does with his wife, Brittany, and longtime trainer Bobby Stroupe.
“They know how to push me,” he said, “whenever I don’t feel like doing the work.”
Frymyer, he said, “has a great feel” for coaxing him through rehab sessions even when he’s tired and sore. She’s not scared to push him even when he’s not feeling great, but he’s also able to push himself then because she has a feel for when to pull back.
That “ultimate trust,” he said, makes him feel like he can keep going with faith that he’s not either overdoing it or pulling up short.
This week that meant participating in 7-on-7 drills but not 11-on-11, with Reid figuring he doesn’t want to risk a setback in an unexpected collision on, say, a jet sweep.
Mahomes being Mahomes, though, he’s making the most of each checkpoint. For a sense of his perspective, he even brought up using “to my advantage” not being able to scramble so he could concentrate more on going through progressions.
He also appreciated just being on the field at all, going through some more normal routines and enjoying the “juice” of being out there with the guys.
In contrast to all the hours he’s been spending in the building “kind of here by yourself.”
Not literally, since he’s had such great support, but more figuratively in the sense that the rehab still can be an isolating experience.
All a reminder of something all the more admirable about Mahomes than we might realize: Like so much else about him that might seem magical, this doesn’t just happen. It’s daunting stuff for flesh and blood ... even if he is a special type of human.