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Andy Reid: Patrick Mahomes is doing great, Justin Fields can win if Mahomes can't go Week 1
Mar 29, 2026Michael David SmithPro Football Talk
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Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is throwing the football , three months after surgery to repair a torn ACL. Chiefs coach Andy Reid is liking what he's seeing. Reid said Mahomes is hard at work and doing well, although he declined to say whether Mahomes will be ready to play Week One. "He's doing great," Reid told Judy Battista of NFL Network. "He spends a ton of time in the building. . . . He's in there for seven hours a day. It's showing, the progress. Now, to tell you a timeline? I mean, I know what he's striving for. We'll just see where it goes from there." If Mahomes can't play at the start of the regular season, Reid said he's confident that the Chiefs can win with newly acquired backup quarterback Justin Fields. "Well, we snuck out and got a good quarterback to back him up," Reid said. "So, if he doesn't, you know, if he's not able to make it for the beginning of the season, then we know we've got a legitimate backup there that can go win games for us." Week One is about nine months after Mahomes suffered the injury, which would be a relatively fast recovery time for a torn ACL. The Chiefs may have to start Fields at the beginning of the season, and Reid sounds confident about that.