GREEN BAY, Wis. -- As the Wisconsin winter nears and the Lambeau Field turf hardens as it does every year after the first frost, Green Bay Packers receiver Randall Cobb may have to protect his sprained right shoulder even more.

That the injury is still bothersome more than six weeks after he fell hard on it in a preseason game means it could linger for most of the year.

Yet Cobb refuses to let it slow him down. After all, he knows how to deal with a hard playing surface.

He grew up playing football -- tackle football, he specified -- on the streets, literally, of his Alcoa, Tennessee neighborhood. He begged his brother, seven years his elder, and their cousins to let him join their game of what he called “concrete football.” They refused until Cobb’s dad finally told them to let the 8-year-old Randall in their game.

“Then my dad told me, ‘I don’t want you to come into the housing crying,’” Cobb said. “So if I was going to play, I’m going to play with the big boys and that’s part of it.”

One time, Cobb said he slammed into a tree. He was wearing a white University of North Carolina hat that quickly turned red as it soaked through with blood. Cobb offered to show the scar above his eye to prove it.

Perhaps that’s where the mental toughness that Cobb has shown through what has been a painful injury is rooted.

“Randall Cobb, he's definitely someone who could play in the '60s, the '90s,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said when asked this week about Cobb’s toughness. “He's just a different type that way. Again, I'm not going to get into the definition of health, because I don't think you can define it as A, B and C. I think it's more a credit to Randall the man, what he's going through.”

Some weeks, Cobb is more bothered by his shoulder than others. He was a full participant in practice leading up to the Week 4 game against the 49ers and then slipped back to limited in advance of last Sunday’s game against St. Louis. He had season lows with three catches for just 23 yards against the Rams, but this week he’s back to full practice participation.

Still, he’s on pace for 90 catches, 998 yards and 13 touchdowns -- not all that far off from his career-best numbers of 91 catches, 1,287 yards and 12 touchdowns last season.

If he can get through Sunday’s game against the Chargers, next week’s bye could help. However, he sounds resigned to the idea that it might be a nuisance all season.

“I think it’s a possibility it could be,” Cobb said.