Green Bay Packers safety Atari Bigby has aggravated the hamstring injury that landed him on the physically unable to perform list, which perfectly follows his pattern.
By most accounts, Bigby is a decent safety, when he can stay on the field. Unfortunately, he can’t stay on the field very often.
In addition to missing the first six games while he was on the PUP list, Bigby missed the next two while he was working his way back into form. Now, he’s going to miss this week’s game with Atlanta and probably the following week, as well.
“Atari is definitely going to be challenged this week and possibly next week,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said on Wednesday.
This is pretty much Bigby being true to form.
In 2009, Bigby missed three games because of injury. In 2008, he missed nine.
You have to go back to 2007 to see the last time Bigby played a full season.
Obviously, that turned out to be his best season. He recorded 86 tackles, five interceptions and forced three fumbles.
What are the Packers going to get out of Bigby this season? Maybe six games?
Fortunately for the Packers, they have a career backup playing some pretty good football in Charlie Peprah, right now. Even though the coaching staff had some asinine plan to rotate Peprah and Bigby, that certainly is no knock on Peprah’s play.
Peprah hadn’t surrendered the starting job and even the staff admitted it was more because they wanted to get Bigby on the field. Still, even though that was their public stance, Peprah still got more reps than Bigby last week, as Bigby played mostly special teams.
Looking to the future, you have to think the Packers are set at strong safety with Peprah and rookie Morgan Burnett, who went on injured reserve earlier this season.
In other words, Bigby, who’s playing on a one-year contract, will probably be getting injured for another team next year.
I’m not trying to hate on Atari Bigby, because the guy can play, but he’s clearly injury prone.
Injury prone doesn’t get it done in the NFL and it’s likely to spell the end of Bigby’s run with the Packers.
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