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The Cincinnati Bengals and Tyler Boyd appear to have avoided an injury disaster.
In their Week 5 win over the Buffalo Bills, the Bengals lost a host of players to various injuries, but the most serious appeared to be that of Boyd, who went down with a knee injury late in the first quarter and was quickly ruled out for the rest of the game.
That’s usually a bad sign that the injury is serious, especially after he had to be assisted off the field by trainers as he barely put any weight on the injured leg.
As it turns out, the injury is just an MCL sprain, according to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.
#Bengals WR Tyler Boyd was diagnosed with a sprained MCL on Sunday, source said. He’s expected to miss a few weeks.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 9, 2017
At about the same time Rapoport reported that news, head coach Marvin Lewis was holding his Monday press conference, where he said Boyd had a sore knee, adding there is no timetable on when the second-year receiver will return.
All said, it’s good to see this injury isn’t serious enough to sideline Boyd for months, if not the entire season. It looked bad seeing him have to be helped off the field on a Sunday when guys like J.J. Watt, Odell Beckham Jr. and Whitney Mercilus were lost to season-ending injuries.
The irony of Boyd’s injury is his absence could be made up by John Ross returning from his knee injury. Ross has only played in one game this season, which happened to be in Week 2 when Boyd was a surprise inactive.
It looks like we may once again see Ross active and Boyd inactive when the Bengals face the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 7.