For the first time since he became the Kansas City Chiefs’ starter in 2018, Patrick Mahomes won’t be the quarterback taking the team into the playoffs. That part alone feels strange. Then it got worse. An ACL tear against the Los Angeles Chargers ended his season. It’s unfamiliar territory for Mahomes, and Tom Brady knows exactly what that feels like. On Tuesday, he sent an uplifting message to the Chiefs QB.

“It’s always the same amount of pain and discomfort, except you’re making progress through that pain and discomfort, which is a hard, psychological thing to battle…Fortunately, I didn’t have those thoughts in year 9. But it’s a tough rehab. You feel like every day it doesn’t feel right, except you’re gaining range of motion and you’re gaining strength. You are on the road to recovery, and I wish him the best,” Brady said on The Let’s Go Podcast.

The play itself didn’t look good right away. Mahomes was scrambling, trying to extend the down and get the ball out, when Da’Shawn Hand clipped him just enough. He went down awkwardly and screamed with pain, grabbing his left knee. Brady has been there. He knows how quickly a season can change because it happened to him, too, back in 2008. And it was every bit as jarring.

Early in the first quarter of the season opener, with 7:27 left on the clock, Brady and the Patriots were moving the ball on their opening drive. Then everything stopped. Brady stayed on the ground, yelling, clutching his left knee after a hit from Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard. The diagnosis came soon after: a torn ACL and MCL, hence the surgery followed.

And the similarities are hard to miss. In 2008, it was Brady’s ninth NFL season and his eighth as a starter when the ACL tear happened. On Sunday, Mahomes suffered the same injury in his ninth season and eighth year running the offense. Both had already won three Super Bowls before that moment. Football has a way of lining things up like that.

Brady, of course, came back. In 2009, he threw for 4,398 yards, 28 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions, earning Comeback Player of the Year. He played for more than a decade after the injury. Mahomes is just starting that road now. And he has given us enough reasons to believe that his comeback can be just as strong.

Comebacks aren’t new to Patrick Mahomes

This is Mahomes’ first ACL tear, but it’s not his first real injury scare. He’s dealt with plenty already: a broken wrist, a dislocated patella, turf toe. Stack it all up, and you get 11 documented injuries over his career. None of them slowed him for long. He’s kept moving forward, and there’s no reason to think this one changes that when he comes back next year.

The early signs are good. Patrick Mahomes had surgery Monday night in Dallas to repair the torn ACL in his left knee, and the team announced it went as planned. The procedure was done by Dr. Dan Cooper, the Cowboys’ head team physician. A league source told ESPN that Cooper also repaired a torn LCL in the same knee.

“I’ve had a good visit with him a couple different times,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said, before revealing Mahomes’ mindset towards the injury.

The HC said Mahomes is “in a good place” after the injury. He added that Mahomes tends to carry things heavier than most.

“He always feels like he let people down, but then he comes back and he’s ready for the challenge ahead, which is what’s real right now. He’s just got to get through surgery or whatever it might be and move on from there.”

That matters. There was some uncertainty about how quickly the surgery could happen. With knee injuries, timing is everything. Sometimes swelling slows the process, and when that happens, the calendar gets pushed back. That didn’t happen here. Everything lined up, and the surgery happened without delay.

The usual recovery timeline for this kind of injury is around nine months. That means Mahomes will miss the offseason program, and his status for the start of next season was always going to depend on how fast the surgery happened. Now that it’s done, the outlook is clearer. As of now, the expectation is that he may miss the opener on September 10. But the Chiefs can live with that.