AP

Any lingering hopes that wide receiver A.J. Green would return to the Bengals lineup this Sunday are on life support at this point.

Green missed practice again on Friday, making it a clean sweep of the three workouts this week, and the team has listed him as doubtful. While coach Marvin Lewis wouldn’t rule Green out and said that players have played without practicing in the past, he also said that the team wanted to be sure that Green could hold up once he does dress for a game.

“We’re trying to get over the hump and find the solution other than totally shutting him down for the rest of the season. [A solution] that gets him as much of the season we can get him,” Green said, via the team’s website. “I don’t want him to be frustrated by it. I want him to feel good about it. When he tells me he’s ready to go. Guys deal all the time with different circumstances. In his mind, when he’s 100 percent ready to deal with that.”

One imagines that the ability to get through an entire practice would be a prerequisite to convincing the team that he’s fit enough to play all 60 minutes in a game, although it’s certainly understandable that the Bengals are hopeful of finding a way to get Green back in the lineup after going three weeks without a victory.