EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsGREEN BAY, Wis. -- A few hours apart on Dec. 14, 2025, Patrick Mahomes and Micah Parsons went down in a heap. First, in Kansas City, the Chiefs quarterback's season was over after his left knee hyperextended on a scramble. Less than two and a half hours later in Denver, the Green Bay Packers' pass rusher stumbled without contact and immediately grabbed his left knee.Two star players. Two ACLs ripped apart. Two vastly different recoveries.When Chiefs rookies and quarterbacks reported for training camp on July 24, Mahomes was fully cleared. From that day on, he has had no reported issues.For Parsons and the Packers, the process has taken much longer. More than three months after Mahomes was cleared, Parsons remains on the physically unable to perform list with no set date for a return to play. However, coach Matt LaFleur this week offered the first hint at when Parsons might return when he said there's a chance he could start practicing next week."The fans always want to know, 'Why is it taking so long?'" said Dr. Michael J. Alaia, a sports orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone Health. "When you do enough ACLs, you just know the variability of the recovery can be so vast, and every patient brings their own set of physical and psychological needs."Parsons was never going to be ready for Week 1, even if he had undergone surgery the day after his injury like Mahomes did. Not only did Parsons wait two weeks for his surgery, but the Packers almost never put a player recovering from a torn ACL on the practice field until nine months after the date of surgery.Tight end Tucker Kraft, who tore his right ACL on Nov. 2, had one of the fastest returns to practice by a Packers player in recent years: 8 months from the date of his surgery (271 days after the injury). He was cleared for full team drills 2 weeks later and made his season debut in Week 1. Last year, receiver Christian Watson practiced 274 days after tearing his right ACL and played in his first game 20 days later.Based on those timelines, Parsons should have been back by now, as it's been 319 days since his injury and 304 days since the surgery.In fact on Sept. 1, general manager Brian Gutekunst said that once Parsons became eligible to come off the PUP list after Week 4, "We're going to be pretty close." Gutekunst went as far as to suggest that the new rule this season that allows players to return to practice after Week 2 if they began the season on the PUP list could be in play for Parsons.Those who know Parsons say he always believes he can do things other players can't. It's why in January, less than a month after his surgery, he said he believed he could return within the first four weeks of the season. Early in training camp, Parsons adjusted that timeline but still said it was "very realistic" to return for the Week 6 game against his former team, the Dallas Cowboys.None of that happened, and, according to a source familiar with Parsons' recovery, it was never in the cards. A November return was always the most likely, even without any setbacks."It was the only thing that made sense knowing he wanted to be 100%," the source said. "Micah has to play a different game than most guys and relies on his speed and athleticism -- on top of the fact that he had the meniscus [tear, which] made it a longer recovery period."When he wasn't going to practice at all in training camp, it solidified where he was at in his recovery process."No two knee injuries are the same, even if it's a torn ACL. Parsons' injury was not simple. Neither was Mahomes'. Parsons revealed in the spring that he also tore the meniscus in his knee. At the time, it was unclear whether his surgeon, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, did a simple trim or a full meniscus repair, but Parsons told ESPN this week that it was the latter."That makes a huge difference," Dr. Sharif Tabbah, who runs Alkem Sports Rx in South Florida and has worked on rehab with several NFL players coming off ACL injuries. "When it's a repair, you're not allowed to bend your knee past 90 degrees for between four to eight weeks, depending on the surgeon's protocol."So that obviously leads to a lot of stiffness and gives guys a hard time getting back into that deep knee bend, which even positionally could make a big difference."Because of that, Parsons told ESPN this week that he did not walk without assistance for eight weeks. Most ACL patients are walking without crutches within two weeks."That leads to a much slower recovery process because you have to protect it," Tabbah said.Mahomes didn't have any meniscus issues, but he did have a torn lateral collateral ligament (LCL), which is why his surgeon, Dr. Dan Cooper of Dallas, operated immediately. According to LaFleur at the time, Parsons' surgery was delayed in part because he was awaiting the birth of his child. Also, some surgeons believe it's best to wait for initial swelling to go down before operating."That's usually right," Alaia said. "The reason Mahomes had his done early was because he had a tear in his LCL. So they wanted to go in early and fix the LCL because sometimes, if the ligaments are ruptured in a certain way, the earlier you fix it, the easier it is to fix it and perhaps the better they do."So there's a reason why he went in early, at least from the reports that you read. I have no personal connections to the actual surgical procedure, but that's usually why."The surgery is merely one part of the process because the recovery and rehabilitation can create unpredictable turns.Watson worked with Tabbah, a doctor of physical therapy, during his recovery. According to Tabbah, Parsons reached out to him immediately after his injury and expressed an interest in working together during his recovery, but it never happened."We stayed in touch throughout the process," Tabbah said. "He sent me some videos and updates and I kind of gave him some guidance along the way from afar, but he never actually ended up coming."Because of that, Tabbah couldn't speak specifically to why Parsons still hasn't practiced.Two weeks ago, before the Packers were getting ready to play the Cowboys, he said on his podcast, "The Edge with Micah Parsons," that if the Super Bowl were that week, he would have played.Kraft and Watson have tried to help Parsons through the process -- Watson more as a sounding board because he knows what it takes to come through better on the other side and Kraft because he was often rehabbing side by side with Parsons when both were at the facility."Every ACL recovery's different," Kraft said. "[Parsons] had a little bit more work done, so his surgeon held him back from full weight bearing and running a little while longer. It's just different. And that's something he'll overcome very soon."Said Watson: "Anytime I've got a chance to check in on him and he's doing stuff, I'm telling him, 'Oh, he's not doing enough,' to kind of just push him because when I was going through it, there was always people there to kind of push me along through it. And honestly if there wasn't, I feel like there needed to be."Watson wasn't implying that Parsons wasn't doing enough; it was merely his way of pushing him. But the reality is that every player attacks their rehab differently."I've had guys commit really heavy where they're doing three, four hours a day, and we're hitting this thing from every angle," Tabbah said. "We're finding ways to do the most without crossing that line of doing too much."Versus just doing what's expected or just doing the minimum where you can come in and do an hour of rehab instead and be like, 'Yeah, I did my rehab every day or I did it three days a week and I traveled and I kind of messed around.' So I've seen all ends of the spectrum with that process."Earlier this month, LaFleur offered perhaps a hint at what might be the holdup for Parsons."You've gotta make sure that your body is, I guess, what's the word I'm looking for?" LaFleur said.When asked if he meant "in sync" LaFleur said: "Yeah, there you go. You don't want one leg to be that much stronger than the other leg is what I'm getting at."Tabbah said symmetry is critical."You definitely want to see less than 10% [differential]," Tabbah said. "I won't even let a guy put a bar on his back and go double leg until we're 20% or less on the differential. So we'll emphasize super-heavy long term on single-leg activity."That's something I see happen sometimes. The only way you can really close that gap is by working single-leg activity. How are you going to do double leg and close the gap? It doesn't really make sense."The late stages of the process can be the most frustrating."I'd say there's an anxiety element that comes to getting close to returning to play," Kraft said.That's where the mental part of it comes in."If a player feels that they have a little bit more to go, then they're probably right," Alaia said. "They probably do have a little bit more to go. You see stories of people that come back after ACLs like [former running back] Adrian Peterson, which was six months, and he had the best season of his entire life."And then you have guys like [former NBA guard] Derrick Rose who, despite four or five surgeries [to fix a knee], their career has drastically changed. And it's because of recurrent injuries and it's because of the rehabilitation. And some guys just take longer to rehab."According to the source familiar with his recovery, one reason that Parsons wants to be 100% -- or as close to it as possible -- before he returns is because of what happened to former Cowboys teammate Trevon Diggs. The cornerback was an All-Pro in 2021 and a Pro Bowler in 2022 before he tore an ACL early in the 2023 season and never returned to that form following his ACL tear."I think watching one of his best friends go through what he went through, coming back early twice and where his career headed afterward, he already had in his head how to approach this situation," the source said.It's also possible that the Packers' insistence on protecting their investment in Parsons is the reason he has yet to return, while Mahomes has been back for months."They play two completely different positions," Kraft said. "The quarterback is the most protected person on the field. Micah is probably the most sought-after to touch on the field. And guys are trying to cut him."If I was playing on the opposite side of Micah, we would be running outside zone cross stiffs at him, trying to make him timid on the backside. That's the reality of the position he plays. It's very violent. A much harder position [to return from an ACL] than [a quarterback like] Patrick Mahomes."
