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Aaron Rodgers thinks Randall Cobb being mic'ed up punctured lung

Eric Edholm

Everyone seems to love when NFL players are mic'ed up. Except perhaps NFL players themselves.

Well, strike that — many players appear to love the attention it brings, but what about injury? Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers believes that his top receiver last season, Randall Cobb, suffered a punctured lung in the playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals because of the microphone pack that's strapped to NFL players when they're mic'ed.

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Rodgers joined former teammate A.J. Hawk's podcast and made it clear he thinks the cumbersome mic pack was the blame when Cobb fell down on top of it after making a spectacular catch — one that ultimately didn't count. Adding injury to insult and all that ...

“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.”

Pretty fascinating stuff. That technology has been a big way for the NFL to unveil players' personalities more, to metaphorically take off the helmets and shed light on the action on the field. Mic'ed up segments are incredibly popular with fans, and the league likely isn't getting rid of them anytime soon.

In fact, we're more likely to see it more often. After all, injuries such as the one Cobb suffered don't appear to happen all that often. So what if everyone is forced to wear a microphone during games?

“Might have to call it a career,” Rodgers said, laughing.

But he clearly doesn't like it in general, and not just for the chance of a fluky injury. For Rodgers, it's making his job harder.

“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."

Rodgers added that it "takes away from the authenticity of the game" and that he doesn't "feel comfortable mic’d up.” Of course, our only guess is that Cobb didn't feel too comfortable either when he slammed his body down on top of a boxy chunk of plastic strapped to his body that caused him to miss a playoff game that the Packers eventually lost.

[h/t PFT and Awful Announcing]

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!