Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green has not played in the team’s last five games and will sit out the season finale due to a hamstring injury.
The decision to hold him out of last week’s game reportedly left Green unhappy because he felt well enough to return to action after going through a week of practice and Bob Holtzman of ESPN reported this week that Green has been missing meetings, which seemed to support the idea that he isn’t pleased with being left on the sideline.
Green responded to that notion via a team spokesman on Friday and said that any thoughts that he’s unhappy with the team are untrue. You wouldn’t expect a player to put out an opposite statement through the team, of course, but Green may have been upset about going through preparations to play last week before being told he wouldn’t play without being unhappy with the team more generally.
Green is signed through the 2019 season and it’s unlikely that the Bengals would have any interest in parting ways with their best offensive player, so chances are that any bad feelings that may have existed will blow over as the struggles and injuries of this year recede into the background.