When the Bengals lost wide receiver Mohamed Sanu to a stress fracture in his foot with five games to go in the regular season, they lost a player who was starting to show some signs of being the kind of receiver they needed as a complement to A.J. Green on the outside.
Sanu had 11 catches and four touchdowns in the three games before he was lost for the season, numbers that seem modest until you realize that the non-Green receivers other than Snau caught only seven touchdowns all year. Andrew Hawkins caught 51 balls out of the slot, but Marvin Jones, Brandon Tate and Armon Binns (before he was cut loose) couldn’t draw the attention away from Green. That hurt the Bengals in the playoffs when they devised a game plan that made little use of Green and barely moved the ball against the Texans.
It’s good news for the Bengals, then, that Sanu has been cleared to start running this month and that things seem to be progressing well for the receiver as he prepares for his second NFL season.
“It’s great. It feels good. I’ve been working out and running,” Sanu said, via the team’s website. “I’ve been running routes for a while and it feels good.”
Barring an outside acquisition, Sanu should be the favorite to start alongside Green next season.