It was a rough year for Packers wide receivers in 2016. Jordy Nelson went down with a torn ACL in the preseason, Davante Adams spent the whole year not filling his void and Randall Cobb suffered a punctured lung in the Packers' playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers has an interesting theory about how it happened, too, and it might make NFL players think twice about getting mic'd up when on the field.
Speaking on the Hawk Cast (hosted by former teammate A.J. Hawk), via Yahoo! Sports, Rodgers pinned the injury on the mic attached to Cobb's body.
"Randall Cobb had a serious injury last year in a playoff game and I believe -- as I think he would as well and the team [would] -- that that was caused from him being mic'd up," Rodgers said. "Because he fell on his mic pack and he had an injury to his insides that kept him out of the game and probably would have kept him out of the rest of the playoffs [had the Packers won].
"The puncture spot, or the injury spot, was directly adjacent to his mic pack."
Being mic'd up is a pretty big part of the league these days, with NFL Films capturing audio from tons of games each week and then distributing the audio through different channels (the always-excellent "Inside the NFL," which airs weekly on Showtime, for instance).
But Rodgers does bring up an interesting point about the future of this stuff, noting there's "too much information" in the 2016 NFL and adding the mic'd up stuff is a "competitive edge for the defense."
"Yeah, I think it's too much information," Rodgers said. "In 2008 there used to be no headset on defense, so the defense had to signal in every play and that was part of the whole Spygate issue and filming signals and what not. But now you have mics on both guards most of the time and you pick up everything that the quarterback says when we're at home and sometimes on the road as well.
"I think that's a competitive edge for the defense and it makes you have to work that much harder with your dummy words and your live and dead words. I mean, that's part of the game there, but I think that the access is a little bit much."
There's a lot in this league that is a massive competitive disadvantage for the defense, so being mic'd up is hardly the end-all for offenses to worry about.
But if players are hurting themselves by wearing microphones, don't be surprised to see a push-back on it. Rodgers already started things with his comments on the Hawk podcast and you can bet people will jump on board.
