Patrick Mahomes looks good during Chiefs practice

Will he or won’t he? The Kansas City Chiefs aren’t exactly being clear as to whether or not Patrick Mahomes will play on Sunday despite a recent knee injury.

Seven short days after the Kansas City Chiefs watched their starting quarterback go down with a knee injury that looked like it could potentially keep him out for some time, perhaps even several weeks, Patrick Mahomes is already back at practice and looking like he may actually suit up on Sunday.

On Thursday, the Chiefs opened up practice to reporters and the resulting videos online of Mahomes going through his warm-ups caused Chiefs Kingdom to freak out momentarily with all sorts of emotions on social media. For some, it was an unbelievable sight just one week after Mahomes had to have his kneecap put back in place on the field. For others, it was confusing since it seems a bit reckless to put Mahomes back out there so quickly.

Either way, here was one such video in case you missed it:

Head coach Andy Reid has been playing coy with the media about who will start for the Chiefs on Sunday night against the Green Bay Packers. This is one of the single toughest games on the schedule this calendar year for the Chiefs, and the showdown between Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers was supposed to be a special contest to watch on primetime.

That said, Mahomes was already dealing with a sore ankle for the first six weeks of the season, a problem that clearly needed some time to rest in order to go away after he’d re-aggravated the injury in both Week 5 and Week 6. Given the knee injury plus the sore ankle, it makes sense for the Chiefs to rest Mahomes for at least a week, if not more, as they will need him most for the postseason. Potentially playing him now feels too risky.

Then again, maybe Mahomes is feeling just fine. The player is the one who needs to control his own destiny as long as he’s doing so with his long-term health in mind. If the knee injury really wasn’t as bad as it looked and the ankle has enjoyed the last 10 days off, maybe we’ll see the primetime matchup we originally anticipated.