Randall Cobb announces he won’t wear an on-field microphone ever again

NFL fans won’t be hearing Packers receiver Randall Cobb mic’d up on NFL Films again.

After suffering a lung injury in last year’s playoffs that could have been related to the mic pack he was wearing, Cobb told reporters Thursday that he won’t wear a microphone going forward.

The injury, which knocked Cobb out of Green Bay’s playoff loss to Arizona, occurred when the receiver landed on his back while making a catch. He coughed up blood on the sideline and was taken to a local hospital. Cobb said Thursday he thinks the mic pack strapped to his back could have had something to do with it. Via ESPN:

“This [microphone] theory isn’t anything new,” Cobb said. “It’s something we’ve talked about plenty of times. There’s no way to prove it, but there’s no way to disprove it, either.”

Cobb’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers, shares in the theory:

“I don’t feel comfortable being mic’d up, and I will say this: Randall Cobb had a serious injury last year in the playoff game, and I believe — and he would as well, and the team — that that was caused by him being mic’d up,” Rodgers said last week on a podcast hosted by former teammate A.J. Hawk.

“He fell on his mic pack and he had an injury to his insides that kept him out of the game, probably would have kept him out the rest of the playoffs. And the puncture spot was directly adjacent to his mic pack.”

It will be interesting to see if Cobb’s situation makes other players less likely to get mic’d up for games. They don’t have a ton of incentive to wear the mics — Cobb said he thought it was cool to look back on what he was saying during a given game but not worth the perceived risk. The player mics during the game are fun for viewers, letting us inside the game or at least inside the trash talk, but if the players aren’t cool with them there’s not much anyone can do.