He's a center. While it will hurt it isn't like they lost an all-pro left tackle.
maybe they will stop running that horrible read option 30 times a game with Kalil out.
I think you are off the mark in a very big way to be honest.
In many cases, esp when dealing with the league having so many young starting QB1s and many generally low IQ QB1's, many centers aren't just calling out the blocking assignments, many like Jason Kelce, were also reading the defense and essentially doing the playcalling at the line for their quarterbacks.
Part of the reason RG3 is using an offense that's a hybrid of his college offense and Newton is using the read option is because both are young but also because both are not particularly high IQ QB1s. Unfortunately it's just not politically correct anymore to say a non white QB1 happens to be a low IQ type player but somehow it's ok for people to take a dump on Toby Gerhart or Jason Sehorn as a novelty or note how physically limited a guy like Ken Dorsey was despite his in game knowledge. It wasn't and is not hard to predict that Vick would struggle when Kelce went down for the year, he had a brand new center who wasn't as smart as the last one, with worse hands, a worse blocker and could not read a defense the same way. Just to be fair, I have serious doubts Peyton Manning was ever a truly high IQ type QB1, just a guy who worked very hard to learn one system and one specific set of progressions until he perfected them. But I think now and have always believed that Jeff Saturday did the heavy lifting for the entire O line and that Colts offense.
How well you can read a defense is, in part, based on speed of how fast you can process information. This is what they are talking about when team mates say Joe "Cool" Montana would have ice water in his veins in the 4th quarter and played as if the game was slowing down for him. That his overall vision and ability to read the defense was so complete, that he was literally playing at a different speed than the rest of the guys on the field, even without being the most athletic QB1 in the NFL in the league, hell even his own roster. This was also, IMHO, a feature that accelerated his ability to be a "touch" passer. Montana didn't just get you the ball, he got you the ball in full stride.
You get guys like Vick and Sanchez, playing long enough to prove they can't process that information fast enough, and you see them struggle. Vick less so for a long time because his extreme athleticism covered some of his weaknesses and allowed him to recover. Cam Newton is not a rocket scientist. Kalil wasn't just calling out blocking assignments, he was also helping to play call and read the defense. Also part of the reason he was a Pro Bowler was because unlike most centers, he didn't need help from his guards to block. That's huge for a center and huge for a team, when your center is athletic enough and has excellent hands and technique to block one on one, even at a disadvantaged starting position, freeing his guards to cheat a little to help their tackles and even being able to help out his guards half the time. You get a Lego lineman like Dallas Reynolds, who is a full standard below replacement level, you get a guy with bad technique, bad feet, slow and clumsy hands and needs help from his guards all the time while offering Vick little to no help in reading the defense and struggling to call out the blocking assignments. When you have a right guard in Danny Watkins who is already struggling, that only compounds the issue more.
When your QB1 is the type that rests on his athleticism and is more likely to sit on the TV and watch the couch, you need a crafty and extremely intelligent center running your offense. Some players naturally "get it" They know what they are supposed to do and what is the right decision to make, they just don't always execute. Guys like Andy Dalton "get it" Dalton can and has survived the loss of his center. Some players can accelerate their learning curve to "get it more" RG3 and Newton and Locker are young, it's not clear what that ceiling would be. Some players will "never get it", they will need their center as a crutch, guys like Sanchez or Vick.
You are only as strong as you are up the middle. This is true for any sport. You take a Tyson Chandler and he can literally change an entire defense for the Knicks despite having an out of shape diva ghetto entitled ball stopping chucker thug like Carmelo Anthony, who treats defensive effort like Kryponite on one side and Amare "The Turnstile" Stoudamire, probably the only NBA player that makes Kevin Garnett look like a Rhodes Scholar and future Scrabble champion, on the other.
Usually, the average fantasy player only notices how a line operates when it's borderline egregious ( the Bears under Angelo, the current Cardinals) but often there are things going on each game and each season, within a team's offensive line play, that impact offensive performance that I think many FFers miss to their competitive disadvantage.
