Patrick Mahomes Tore His ACL And The Chiefs Tore Off The Bandage

Who else? Gardner Minshew brought down the Chiefs dynasty. Down 16-13 to the Chargers, helmed by a backup quarterback, and in field goal range, Kansas City had 20 seconds to save its slim playoff chances. Head coach Andy Reid had his choice of appropriate endings here. One would have felt more satisfying: He could have called some safe run plays and brought the field goal unit out so that it ended on a missed Harrison Butker kick. But Reid either had so little faith in Butker to tie the game or so little faith in Minshew to lead an OT drive that he opted to get it over with in regulation. He let his team take a delay-of-game penalty that took them out of field goal range. Then, he tried to push the ball downfield. Minshew’s pass, intended for an extremely covered Travis Kelce, was picked off by Derwin James to end the game.

The Chiefs have withstood many things in the last decade, but they could not withstand the loss of the quarterback they’ve come to use as a bandage. On Kansas City’s final drive, Patrick Mahomes scrambled to his right and threw the ball away. When the CBS camera cut back to Mahomes, he was on the ground, surrounded by Chiefs staffers and grabbing his left knee. When he emerged from the blue medical tent, a pair of trainers walked him back to the locker room. Mahomes’s postgame tweet pledging to be “back stronger than ever” foreshadowed the eventual diagnosis: The team announced that he’d sustained a torn ACL in his left knee and was evaluating surgical options. Elsewhere around the league, on a gruesome NFL day, a wide-open season further widened. Micah Parsons left Sunday’s Packers-Broncos game with what’s reportedly also an ACL tear, and Sean McVay didn’t seem positive he’d have Davante Adams back for a crucial swing of division games after the Rams receiver pulled up with a hamstring injury against the Lions.

The Chiefs fell to 6-8 and are officially eliminated from the playoffs, bringing to a close some pretty astonishing streaks. Kansas City had not missed the playoffs since 2014. This year, Mahomes’s eighth as a starter, will be his first season without an appearance in the AFC championship game. He’d started in five of the last six Super Bowls. Before Sunday, he’d never lost three straight games in a season. 

It's a credit to Mahomes that no one could fully count out a team with so few redeemable qualities. In the last couple seasons, the Chiefs offense had grown predictable, held back by an anemic run game. The scheme asked Mahomes to make everything happen himself; fittingly, the only Chiefs touchdown of the game was a Mahomes scramble into the end zone. Before losing by many scores in the Super Bowl, Kansas City rode a conservative brand of football to a 12-0 record in one-score games last year. This year, the bill came due for that good fortune: Sunday’s was their seventh one-score loss of the season.

Even before the Mahomes injury, the Chiefs were due for some revamping and might have looked pretty different in 2026. Kelce, who turned 36 a few months ago, declined to speak to media in Kansas City after Sunday's game, but he did tell reporters in November that he plans to make a decision on retirement after the season. Chris Jones, another player relied on too much of late, was so tired afer the game that he didn’t even realize the Chiefs had been eliminated. “We still have a fighting chance,” he said at the postgame podium before puzzled reporters broke the news to him. “Are we out of the playoffs? We are? OK.” In his defense, it’s hard to believe.