Which NFL Quarterbacks Head Into 2026 Under a Cloud of Fitness Concerns?
Heading into last season, Patrick Mahomes had led the Kansas City Chiefs to at least the AFC Championship game in all seven of his seasons as a starter. Five of those games resulted in a Super Bowl appearance, with three of those trips to the Big Game yielding Lombardi Trophies. But there he was, Week 15 of the 2025 season, crumpled on the turf as the Chiefs Dynasty dissolved before our very eyes.
KC was already in deep water at that point. Back-to-back defeats to the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving and the Houston Texans left them staring down the barrel of a shock playoff miss. Then, down 16-13 to the Chargers in week 15, Mahomes knew he had to drive his team down the field and secure the win if his side’s faint postseason hopes were to remain alive.
The three-time Super Bowl MVP scrambled toward the sideline, doing everything he could to keep the Chiefs in contention, only for Da’Shawn Hand to spin him to the ground, hyperextending the quarterback’s left knee on impact. He hobbled off, Kansas City lost the game, and they would proceed to lose the next three without their talisman, collapsing to a dismal 6-11 record.
2026 Season Beckons
Fast forward five months, and a new era dawns. As ever, online betting sites consider the Chiefs the contenders to win Super Bowl LXI next February. The Lucky Rebel betting platform currently positions them at +1500, firmly in the chasing pack behind the +750 outright favorite Los Angeles Rams, whose SoFi Stadium home will be hosting that big game.
But ACL tears don’t recover quickly. Some are wondering whether Mahomes will even be fit for the start of the 2026 season in September. And he isn’t the only one who’s a doubt. Here are three quarterbacks who have major fitness questions hanging over them heading into next term.
Patrick Mahomes
Understand the weight of what happened first. This was a quarterback who had barely missed time in nearly a decade, whose only significant prior injuries were a dislocated kneecap in 2019 and turf toe in Super Bowl LV. A player who had redefined what a dynasty looked like in the salary-cap era. Then one December scramble shredded both his ACL and LCL, and the NFL’s most important player went from the operating room to a rehabilitation center twenty-four hours later.
By May, GM Brett Veach was saying, “way ahead of schedule.” Andy Reid confirmed Mahomes is hitting every checkpoint for strength and mobility. Jay Glazer put a Week 1 return on the table. And yet — every Chiefs fan knows exactly why they can’t fully exhale. Because “ahead of schedule” still means nine months from a combined ACL and LCL repair. Because nobody — not Veach, not Reid, not Glazer — truly knows what Mahomes looks like at full speed until he’s taking live drop-backs in July training camp and cutting without hesitation.
Daniel Jones
Daniel Jones has torn his ACL and his Achilles tendon in consecutive injury chapters. That’s the sentence the Indianapolis Colts read before handing him the largest two-year contract in NFL history — two years, $88 million, up to $100 million with incentives, $50 million guaranteed at signing, all while he was still on crutches. That deal represents a declaration of belief so emphatic it borders on reckless — and it may also be the single shrewdest offseason decision any team made.
Here’s why Shane Steichen isn’t sweating: the newly christened “Indiana Jones” posted a 31-touchdown, 10-interception season in Indianapolis in 2025, finished seventh in EPA+CPOE, and looked like an entirely different quarterback than the one the Giants quietly let go in 2024. He led the Colts to a stunning 8-2 start before their bye week, and their lengthy postseason drought looked poised to come to an end. Shockingly, they wouldn’t win another game all season, losing seven on the spin with Jones going down with that devastating injury in the week 14 loss to divisional rivals Jacksonville.
The good news is that Jones has already resumed drop-backs and throwing during his recovery. In March, he told reporters flatly that he expects to be 100% for Week 1. The money is a statement. The Achilles is still the question. At what point does resilience become a pattern that even the most committed front office can’t ignore forever?
Bo Nix
Sean Payton had just watched his quarterback win a Divisional Round playoff game for the ages. Sophomore Bo Nix was spectacular, repeatedly torching the Bills both with bombs downfield and scrambles that kept the Bills’ defense chasing shadows. But on those final snaps setting up Will Lutz’s eventual game-winning field goal, something cracked. Literally: Nix’s Ankle.
The young sensation broke his ankle in winning that game, and Payton walked into the press room — after the celebration had barely started — to tell the world exactly what had happened. He felt compelled, he said, because the chances of this staying quiet were basically zero. What he revealed cut through the post-game euphoria fast: Nix had fractured a bone in his right ankle, the same ankle he’d broken once in high school and once at Auburn.
Three fractures. Same bone. The word Payton used in January was “inevitable” — a preexisting ankle condition that the Denver medical staff knew about, a fracture that was, in Payton’s clinical phrasing, “a matter of when”. A second surgery followed in late April 2026. By May, Payton was back to his cheerful playbook: Nix will be full speed for training camp, they’ll have to hold him back, he’s doing great.
Maybe. But Payton also said that phrase — “a matter of when” — about the first surgery, and now there’s been a second one. While his seeming recovery might not make that phrase ominous for 2026, can Denver really bank on Nix being the face of the franchise for the next decade if his ankle is going to repeatedly let him down?
