Reggie Gilbert

There is a dehumanizing reality to being a certain kind of professional athlete.

Some players are stars. Franchises build rosters around them. Careers rise and fall with them. People get rich or lose their jobs based on how they perform.

Other players are more like line item commodities. They fill out rosters only until a team can find someone marginally better, then they’re cast aside at a moment’s notice. And often, it doesn’t even have to be a real player that results in that final career-altering move; it can be as simple as the idea of one.

The funny thing is, there’s no technical difference between these two categories of player. One’s just a lot more expensive, and one tends to have to update his mailing address a lot more often.

That was the case for Reggie Gilbert, a little-used Packers pass rusher who stuck around for a couple of years only to ultimately experience the hard reality of the NFL: teams only want you around until they think there’s someone better.

Gilbert joined the Packers as an undrafted free agent in 2016 after a college career at Arizona in which he played what was then believed to be a school record 57 career games after being granted a medical hardship waiver for a fifth season. While he was there, Arizona enjoyed one of its best stretches in program history, appearing in four bowl games and winning 33 games from 2012 through 2015.

It’s surprising to say, but Gilbert would walk into a far different situation in Green Bay.

He’d spend the 2016 season on the practice squad, racking up the first six of what would add up to be 29 career transaction notices on his personal Pro Football Reference page from May 2016 through February 2017 as he shuffled through the various stages of low-level free agency. The Packers would start that year slowly before getting red hot to end the season as Aaron Rodgers carried the team all the way to the 2016 NFC Championship game, which they would lose to the Atlanta Falcons.

And that would basically set the tone for the rest of Gilbert’s run in Green Bay. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a decent player in his own right, but he was firmly in that second category of player, and his time with the Packers would be shaped by someone very much in the first category, Aaron Rodgers.

Gilbert started the 2017 season on the practice squad again, and he probably would have stayed there but for developments with Aaron Rodgers. In 2017, Rodgers broke his collarbone for the second time, and spent most of the year on the sideline. He returned for one game, which the Packers lost, and then headed back to injured reserve, the Packers’ season now over.

While the Packers’ window closed, Gilbert’s opened. He ascended to the 53-man roster and played two meaningless games to end the 2017 season: a 16-0 shutout at the hands of the Minnesota Vikings and a 35-11 season-ending beatdown courtesy of the Detroit Lions. Things were bad for the Packers, but good for Gilbert: he recorded two tackles, three quarterback hits, and his first career quarterback sack, bringing down Matthew Stafford for an eight-yard loss in the second quarter.

He’d earn a much bigger role in 2018, appearing in every game and notching another 2.5 sacks. One of those two came in a 22-0 shutout win over the Buffalo Bills in which the Packers took down a rookie quarterback by the name of Josh Allen seven times, including 3.5 sacks by legendary pass rusher Kyler Fackrell.

Unfortunately, Gilbert’s career was about to be shaped by Aaron Rodgers again. All was not well between Rodgers and Packers head coach Mike McCarthy in 2018, and McCarthy became another in a long line of similar object lessons in the NFL: there are many people who can coach like Mike McCarthy, but there are few who can play quarterback like Aaron Rodgers.

The Packers already had a new general manager at the helm as of 2018, and with a new coach on the way in 2019, courtesy of the Rodgers/McCarthy rift, Gilbert’s days would turn out to be numbered. He was traded to the Tennessee Titans before the 2019 season, bringing a sixth round pick in the 2020 draft for the Packers in return.

Gilbert played a single season with the Titans, lining up for 11 games, including five starts. He would have short stints with the Cardinals, Jaguars, and Lions after that, but would never appear in a game for any of them.

The sixth round pick the Packers acquired for Gilbert, meanwhile, turned out to be offensive lineman Jake Hanson, who would play 11 games across 2021 and 2022, proving to be more of an idea than an actual player.

But when you’re at the bottom of the NFL heap, that’s the reality. Sometimes an idea is all it takes to end your stint with your team, and sometimes that idea only has to be as compelling as a sixth round pick.