Patrick Mahomes update

[KillerGoose]

Here is a fairly reasonable breakdown from Reddit. Take it with a grain of salt, but none of this sounds outlandish.

Quote:A medical analysis of Patrick Mahomes’s injury.
Otherwise titled: Patrick Mahomes almost definitely does not have a high ankle sprain.

Thought I would provide an analysis of what mahomes is dealing with this week… I’ve never done a non bengals player before but figured it’s probably the most important injury of the week.

As always… I have ten+ years of sports medicine experience but am not affiliated with the bengals (or chiefs in this case).

First let’s tackle the kind of ankle sprains (before I say why I think Pat most certainly does not have a high ankle sprain).

There are many ligaments and tendons in the ankle that make the anatomy complicated. But for simplicity you can categorize ankle sprains, or ligament injuries, into three major categories: lateral, medial, and high.

When someone generally says “I sprained my ankle” they generally mean a lateral ankle sprain. They’re common bc our feet tend to invert (go in towards the middle of our bodies) when we roll the ankle. There are 3 main ligaments on the outside or lateral aspect of our ankle that often get injured when this occurs. This can range from low grade (walk it off and keep playing and ice it later) to pretty high grade (ruptured ligaments, needing a boot for several weeks, etc.)

Medial ankle sprains are less common. The main ligament on the inside of your ankle is big and broad and strong. And we usually don’t roll the ankle that direction except under major stress. Mahomes suffered this kind of injury mechanism when he got rolled up on. You see linemen get this a lot too and the ligament can also get damaged with other mechanisms.

A high ankle sprain is much different. It’s an injury to the big and broad set of ligaments that actually hold the bottom parts of the shin bones (tibia and fibula) together. They are essentially above the ankle joint while the medial and lateral ligaments are below the joint.

A true high ankle sprain is a major injury. It’s very uncommon for someone with a legit high ankle sprain to walk without a boot especially in the first couple weeks. And if you look at most contact sport athletes with a high ankle sprain it’s a 4-6 week recovery if not longer.

One of the reasons for this is that it leaves the space between the tibia and fibula and ankle joint itself unstable with a high likelihood of further injury (and it hurts like hell). It’s one of those injuries you generally can’t just tape up and play through (though maybe it’s happened I don’t know).

I contend that mahomes has more of a medial sprain than a high ankle sprain. I think the team pushes out “high ankle sprain” because it’s more vague and people don’t really know what it is. But at worst I’d bet there’s mild swelling on mri in the high ankle area but no actual injury. They would not, and he likely could not, play through that due to the pain and instability.

Therefore I believe he’ll play Sunday with some mild pain but likely not be limited much. His injury mechanism looks like a nasty medial sprain. But if he truly had a high ankle sprain I do not believe he would have finished Saturday nor practiced today.

My only contribution here is that I have had a high ankle sprain before and they are miserable, bluntly put. There is no way I could have ran and moved around, regardless of painkillers. I'm not Patrick Mahomes of course, but he is moving very smoothly. I won't be surprised to see him look fairly normal on Sunday.