A.J. Green gets an honorable mention on list of NFL’s top receivers

After becoming one of the NFL’s elite receivers for much of his career, A.J. Green has taken a step back in recent years, mainly due to injuries costing him 23 of a possible 32 games.

That’s also led to Green being slept on heading into the 2020 season, though ESPN made sure to give him an honorable mention in their list of the league’s top 10 receivers for 2020.

”He’s probably practiced all of five minutes over the last year. He’s still a top-10 talent easily, but hard to put him on there because of all the injuries,” an AFC executive told ESPN.

Green has averaged 5.4 catches, 80.2 yards and 0.6 touchdowns per game for his nine-year career (8 seasons after missing all of 2019). Over a full regular season, that comes to 86.4 grabs for 1,283.2 yards in 9.6 touchdowns. He’s on pace to break nearly every receiving record in Bengals history, but this may be his final year in the Queen City.

Green is currently set to play under the franchise tag if no long-term extension is reached by the July 15th deadline to do so. The expectation is there will be no deal, so Green will have to play the 2020 season on the tag, which is worth about $18 million for wide receivers.

Green has said he would play on the tag but likely skip offseason workouts if he didn’t have some sort of extension. That turned out to not be a real issue since the Bengals only had virtual offseason work.

As for training camp, the expectation is Green will report and not skip any sessions. But after he went down in the first camp session last year, it won’t be a shock if he sits out some of all of it.

Still, the odds favor Green taking part to he can build chemistry with new quarterback Joe Burrow, as the two were denied a chance to work out this offseason due to the coronavirus.