When the Cincinnati Bengals selected offensive tackle Jonah Williams with the 11th overall pick in April, they certainly didn’t expect that he wouldn’t make his debut with the team until 2020.
Unfortunately, their first-round draft pick out of the University of Alabama is expected to miss the entirety of the 2019 NFL season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder this week.
Williams suffered the injury while participating in the team’s off-season workouts. Head coach Zac Taylor said that the 21-year-old was just “dinged up” after he missed the end of the team’s workouts, but it turns out that the injury was more serious than was originally thought.
The news is especially difficult for Cincinnati and their new head coach considering that Williams was penciled in to become the team’s starting left tackle immediately in the 2019 season due to a fantastic pedigree that he takes into the league.
Williams was named a unanimous first-team All American at his position in 2018 after an excellent season for the Alabama Crimson Tide. He was expected to step in immediately and become a building block of Cincinnati’s offensive line, a unit that struggled to find consistency in the 2018 season.
It turns out that Williams’ addition to the offensive line will have to wait, and that Cincinnati won’t get a glimpse of him in action until next season.
