Even before yesterday’s announcement, the Bengals seemed to be planning for life without Boling. First year head coach Zac Taylor remains optimistic about his offensive line, but every NFL team is optimistic in July. Moreover, no coach ever publicly says his team is in trouble at a certain spot. Their job is to calm panic, not create more of it.
Still, there is no way around the fact that losing Boling is a massive blow to a unit that was already a question mark. Even in the stats obsessed world we live in, we have yet to come up with a really good way to track offensive linemen.