![tackle knocks man over in backyard]()
It's so funny to think about how so many of us who make a living off writing about football couldn't hold a candle athletically to anyone who ever set foot on an NFL field. This article is a case-in-point, Exhibit A reminder of that.
Former Cincinnati Bengals guard Clint Boling, a solid if not spectacular former fourth-round pick out of Georgia who carved out an eight-year career in the league to rake in
over $26 million in earnings, apparently had enough of his pal even faintly suggesting he could take him in a mano-a-mano trench battle.
Wanna see the epitome of the "f**k around and find out" phenomenon? Here you go, courtesy of longtime NFL quarterback Chase Daniel:
https://twitter.com/chasedaniel/status/1827803938089038265?
The caption Daniel accompanies the post with makes me think he's slightly in his feelings about how people may or may not have reacted to his trajectory as a professional football player. As a public-facing figure who threw a grand total of 273 passes across 13 NFL seasons, you can understand why and how Daniel was an easy target.
The flip side of that: Chase Daniel lasted
thirteen freaking years in the National Football League, where most players are lucky to play a handful of season. He made himself valuable enough to continue getting opportunities in quarterback rooms and spot-start duties. That's kind of apropos for this story about Clint Boling, who, as Daniel reveals, is 50 some-odd pounds down from his listed playing weight of 311 pounds.
Whoever the little nerd boy who lined up across from Boling was — sorry Mr. Boling if it's your son or nephew or something this is all in jest and good fun please don't track me down and yeet me into a parallel universe
I'm a huge Bengals fan etc. — he was like
Big-Lebowski-Donny-levels (necessarily-capitalized) Out Of His Element. Saw this earlier today and couldn't help but toss it in here.
https://twitter.com/brianchaley/status/1827638485890855414
Per Daniel's account of Boling's anatomy, dude is still somewhere in the neighborhood of tipping the scales at 260.
Of course a simple one-armed strike to the chest against a terribly average American male is going to send him several feet backwards, onto his rear. As Les Grossman said in
Tropic Thunder: That's physics. It's inevitable.
I hope this finds you well, fellow football fans, on this sort of calm before the storm, Twilight Zone-y weekend of Week Zero college football and the real-game precursory ennui that is the last week of NFL preseason football.
Imma be doing my Les Grossman dance once NFL Week 1 hits. Hope the guy who got pancaked by Boling is in good-enough shape to do the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr9_GfeoCjk
