Patrick Mahomes suffered a knee injury on a fourth-down quarterback sneak during the second quarter of Thursday night's matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos.
There's no official diagnosis or timetable as of writing, but expert projections are complicating what was an otherwise clear path to the postseason for the Chiefs.
Dr. Brian Cole — the team physician for the Chicago White Sox and Bulls and one of the leading knee doctors in the country — told The Action Network's Darren Rovell, "If patella dislocation with no loose piece of cartilage, could be 2-3 weeks soonest. If loose piece knocked off the femur or patella would need 6-8 weeks."
Our Director of Predictive Analytics, Sean Koerner, estimates Mahomes' potential loss could be worth nine points to the spread. "The Chiefs have been vulnerable against the run, too," Koerner added, "so I think it's going to expose their defense a bit if teams don’t need to pass as much to keep up."
As an example, the Chiefs could be as much as 4.5-point underdogs to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football according to Koerner's projections. If Mahomes were playing against the Packers, we'd project the Chiefs to be 4.5-point favorites.
PointsBet had the Chiefs slated as 3-point favorites in their Week 8 lookahead lines, but FanDuel has opened the Packers up at -3 following Mahomes' injury.
The Chiefs had an 84.92% chance to make the playoffs and 6.47% chance to win the Super Bowl heading into Thursday Night Football, according to our simulations.
