Atari Bigby's Ankle Injury

As golden as 2007 was for S Atari Bigby, 2008 was a stinker. It wasn't really his fault as injuries stole the season from him. But this did surprise me.

But after spraining his ankle in the third exhibition game, Bigby's season devolved into an injury-filled mess. He only played in seven games (six starts). When he did play, he was torched by running backs and burned by receivers.

But he was battered. More so than anybody outside the Packers knew.

"You guys don't even know how bad it was," Bigby said. "But it was something serious. But I wasn't at liberty to explain it."

The Packers, like many National Football League teams, do not like their players talking about the extent of their injuries.

I had no idea his ankle was that bad. Mike Florio sees it as another example of an NFL team that damages the integrity of the game.

Here's his 2008 game log. While playing with his bad ankle, he made his one true big play of the 2008 season; a game ending INT in week 1 vs. Minnesota. Then he hurt his hamstring in week 2, and rarely played the rest of the season. As I was watching him get torched in the game at New Orleans, I remember thinking that his hamstring wasn't healed and they might as well bench him. It doesn't excuse the Packers if they were hiding the injury, but his hamstring injury was worse than his ankle injury. At least he could play on his injured ankle.

The Packers disclosed the bad ankle before week 1. He should have been on the injury report for something in weeks 9-12 because it was obvious something was wrong with him during the week 12 game at New Orleans. This isn't as bad as QB Ben Roethlisberger's admission that he had an X-ray "somewhere" before the Super Bowl, but the NFL and the teams could be doing a better job.