Patrick Mahomes has made a remarkable recovery from a torn ACL and LCL in his left knee. The Chiefs quarterback injured his knee in a Dec. 14 game and underwent surgery the following day.
A little over seven months later, he is cleared for training camp.
Mahomes said he consulted with several players who went through a similar rehab.
“I talked to Tom [Brady] early in the process because he had the same injury, a very similar injury that I had,” Mahomes said Friday, via Pete Sweeney of the Kansas City Star.
Brady tore the ACL and MCL in his left knee during the season opener in 2008 before winning Comeback Player of the Year in 2009.
“It’s just talking to guys that have been through this process and just saying how you have to stay on top of it,” Mahomes said. “It’s a long process. I remember sitting on the table and watching us play those last few games and how much it hurt me, but I knew that if I continued to work, I could be at this spot where I get cleared for practice. Now I’m just trying to get to that spot where I’m cleared to play in the regular season on that first week.”
Mahomes also talked to former Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu and veteran tight end Zach Ertz. Mathieu tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee in 2013 and had another ACL tear in 2015, and Ertz tore his ACL a week before Mahomes’ injury.
His conversations with Ertz turned into a rehab competition.
“We kind of had like competitions on where we were at, and where we were rehabbing,” Mahomes said of Ertz. “It would start off as how much deadlift — what you’re deadlifting, where you’re at — and then [we would] send little videos. He’s jumping and doing certain acceleration things, and I’m sending him next week doing cutting and stuff like that.
“It keeps the competition going because it’s a long process and you feel like sometimes you’re lonely because you’re doing stuff by yourself, and you’re just competing against yourself, so it gave me someone else that I can compete with to push my competitive drive.”
Bucs Clips
Former Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden and former Buccaneers cornerback Ronde Barber will be sharing a booth for a preseason game next month.
The Buccaneers announced that Gruden and Barber will be on the call for their August 22 home game against the Chiefs.
Gruden has said he wants to be a play-by-play announcer, and now he will be, at least for one preseason game, for the franchise he coached to a Super Bowl XXXVII victory after the 2002 season. Barber was a Hall of Fame player on that team.
Gruden coached the Buccaneers from 2002 to 2008 and had two stints as head coach of the Raiders, from 1998 to 2001 and from 2018 to 2021. His second stint ended when he was pressured into resigning over language he had used in emails he sent while working as a broadcaster for ESPN. Gruden is suing the NFL for leaking those emails to the media.
The Buccaneers removed Gruden from their Ring of Honor when those emails surfaced in 2021, but reinstated him to the Ring of Honor last year. And now the team has hired Gruden to be part of its preseason broadcasts.
The Buccaneers will break out their original uniforms again this season.
The team wore their 1976 duds twice in 2025 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise and initially said that there were no plans to continue wearing them in the future, but they announced a new plan on Wednesday. They will don the throwback white jerseys and helmets with their original Buccaneer logo against the Chargers at home in Week 13.
Both games that featured the white-on-white uniforms ended with Bucs wins in 2025. They beat the Jets 29-27 in Week 3 and topped the Seahawks 38-35 in Week 5. The Seahawks also wore their original 1976 uniforms for that game.
The team has not announced any future plans to wear the throwbacks, but another win against the Chargers probably wouldn’t hurt the chances that we’ll be seeing them again.
Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield has set a deadline. His team is going to try to comply.
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated reported earlier this week that the Bucs are ready to “dive in” to negotiations with Mayfield, whose three-year, $100 million deal expires after the 2026 season.
He’s technically due to make $27.5 million this year, with available incentives. Past tinkering with his cash flow has pushed his total compensation for 2026 to $40 million.
The most important figure is the cap number: $39.975 million. By rule, that pushes his 2027 franchise tag to at least $47.97 million, a 20-percent increase over the cap charge in the last year of the contract.
The challenge continues to be pegging the right value, given that the range for veteran starting quarterbacks spans low in the $20 millions to the mid-$60 millions. The real question may be whether Mayfield’s new-money APY begins with a “4" or a “5".
The market is the market. But some teams (like the Dolphins in 2024) have done market-level deals they quickly came to regret.
Whatever happens, bet on this — Mayfield will be willing to bet on himself, if necessary. During the latest season of Quarterback on Netflix, Mayfield revisits his decision to withdraw from Texas Tech after Kliff Kingsbury made Davis Webb the starter and enroll at Oklahoma without a spot on the football team.
Mayfield has already made the ultimate roll of the dice on himself. And look at how it turned out — Heisman Trophy winner, No. 1 overall pick, and career earnings (through 2026) of more than $130 million.
Mayfield’s history makes it clear that he won’t think twice about passing on a good-not-great offer from the Bucs and take his chances on something better if he becomes a free agent in March.
The NFL Players Association released its annual Rising Stars list on Tuesday and the first overall pick of this year’s draft is one of the players at the top.
Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza is No. 1 on the list of the 10 rookies that the NFLPA projects to be future members of the Top 50 list of licensed player product sales. There is also a list of 10 players with NFL experience who have not been on the Top 50 and it is topped by Saints quarterback Tyler Shough.
Mendoza is followed on the list by Cowboys safety Caleb Downs, Cardinals running back Jeremiyah Love, Titans wide receiver Carnell Tate, Eagles wide receiver Makai Lemon, Commanders linebacker Sonny Styles, Saints wide receiver Jordyn Tyson, Giants linebacker Arvell Reese, Ravens wide receiver Ja’Kobi Lane, and Buccaneers edge rusher Rueben Bain.
The list of veteran players also includes Bears tight end Colston Loveland, Raiders tight end Brock Bowers, Chiefs running back Kenneth Walker, Panthers wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, Buccaneers wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, Cardinals tight end Trey McBride, Dolphins running back De’Von Achane, Bills running back James Cook, and Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez.
Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles’s May comment that running back Bucky Irving will be ready to go at some point in the summer or fall created some questions about his availability for training camp, but things have moved in the right direction since that point.
Irving, who had shoulder surgery after the 2025 season, was able to get on the field for a little work before the team wrapped up their offseason program and things have continued to progress with camp set to start next week.
While speaking to Mark Skol of Fox 13 from his youth football camp, Irving said that he feels healthy and believes that he will be ready to go when the team has its first training camp practice. That should allow him to avoid the physically unable to perform list and put him on track to be in the backfield for Week 1 against the Bengals.
Irving was limited to 10 games last season and finished the year with 173 carries for 588 yards and a touchdown. That was a sharp drop from his rookie year production and the Bucs could use a return to that kind of effectiveness on the ground as they try to work their way back into the playoffs.
Free agent safety Jordan Whitehead is cleared to resume his football career, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports. Dr. Alex Vaccaro, the Eagles’ spine specialist, has signed off on Whitehead’s return from neck surgery.
Whitehead, 29, recently worked out for the Colts and Texans and is expected to meet with more teams soon.
He was seriously injured in a two-vehicle car crash in Tampa on Jan. 4, 2025, and missed last season.
Whitehead, a fourth-round pick in 2018, played five years for the Buccaneers and two for the Jets.
He has played 105 games with 101 starts, totaling 557 tackles, 11 interceptions, 45 passes defensed and two forced fumbles.
Even at 84, Hall of Fame head coach Bill Parcells continues to stay connected to the game.
As recently noted by the folks at JoeBucsFan.com, Parcells said in an interview last month with Sal Licata that Parcells continues to watch two NFL teams closely.
“With Sean [Payton’s] team, Todd Bowles, the Tampa Bay coach, I try to,” Parcells said. “Because I know I’m going to talk to them the next week.”
Both Payton and Bowles worked for Parcells before becoming head coaches.
The fact that Payton (who coaches the Broncos after a long tenure with the Saints) and Bowles (who coached the Jets before become the Buccaneers’ coach) keep in regular touch with Parcells shows that Parcells has plenty of advice to give — and that they’re more than willing to take it.
Parcells coached four NFL teams over 19 seasons, leading the Giants to two Super Bowl wins and took the Patriots to the Super Bowl. He got the Jets to the AFC Championship in his second season. In 2013, Parcells was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby says four quarterbacks stand out as the hardest in the NFL to sack.
Asked in a kick.com interview who he considers the hardest to sack in the league, Crosby named Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, Bills quarterback Josh Allen and Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield.
“Mahomes has definitely got to be up there, Lamar is a freak athlete, he’s so quick and fast. Josh Allen is like my size playing quarterback, but you’ve got to really fucking tackle him. I’d say those three are the top,” Crosby said. “A sleeper one, too: Baker Mayfield. He pissed me off. I had two of them I should have had on him. He ducked under, got under them. I was fucking livid. Baker’s tough. I like Baker.”
Crosby never sacked Mayfield in that game (the photo accompanying this post shows one of the near-sacks that Mayfield escaped), and Mayfield threw for three touchdown passes in a 28-13 Buccaneers win. Crosby hasn’t forgotten.
Defensive lineman Pat O’Connor will not be playing any more football.
O’Connor announced his retirement in an Instagram post on Thursday. O’Connor entered the league as a Lions seventh-round pick in 2017, but moved on to the Bucs after being released and played in 68 games for the team. That run included a Super Bowl win and O’Connor returned to Detroit for his final two seasons.
“If you had told my younger self that I’d play this long, spend my entire career with just two teams, get drafted, and win a Super Bowl, he would have called you crazy. But here we are,” O’Connor wrote in his post.
O’Connor had 52 tackles, seven tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks in 88 career games. He also had two tackles in seven playoff appearances.
