So I ended up doing this replacement yesterday. From looking at it, it did not seem to be possible to do without removing the bumper cover. Removing the cover wasn't really all the bad, except for a couple of those plastic push pin fasteners that didn't want to come out. Luckily I keep a bag of those around so I wasn't worried about damaging them. The bigger issue I ran into is that all 6 of the bolts holding the bumper support on were rusted on tight. Broke every bolt when trying to get them off. I tried pb blaster, but it didn't seem to help. I did not get a torch on them...maybe that would have been what it needed. I'd recommend just sourcing 6 new bolts for that when the time comes. I was dumb and did it on a Thursday night at 10pm and needed the car the next day, so I just drilled out the welded on nuts and put a longer 3/8 bolt and nut on there. Worked fine. That support was also way more rusty than I thought it was, basically fell apart when taking it off.