As if losing the Super Bowl wasn’t hard enough on Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, he got a whole new beating after the game. After their win, some of the Denver Broncos took to laying into Newton, hinting that his reticence to go after that fumble against DeMarcus Ware shows Newton’s selfishness on the field.
I know it’s easy to tee off on a guy like Newton, but seriously, it’s time to get a grip. Of course the natural reaction to Newton not diving after that fumble is to hold it against him. It’s just the first and immediate idea that hits you when you see something like that.
But you have to look at this from the broader perspective. You have to keep in mind that Newton’s left shoulder was not right. Credit to the Broncos’ defense, they smacked Newton around like he hadn’t been all season long. Left and right they were destroying him and putting him on the ground. You could see Newton gingerly sort of favoring the shoulder before the snap.
If Newton were to go after that fumble and try to wrestle Ware off the ball, the quickest way for him to do that would have been to lead into the ball with that left shoulder. Newton’s a tough guy, but dropping his 245-pound frame onto that shoulder could have been disastrous to both himself and his team. Tell me, if Newton got knocked out of the game, is Derek Anderson going to win Carolina that game? How about Joe Webb?
Newton is, and was, literally the entire engine of that Panthers offense. If Carolina was to have any chance of mounting any kind of comeback, Newton had to stay on the field. And he had to do what was going to keep him out there. Even if it meant laying up on a play that, honestly, he probably would have made if his arm was right.
Besides, I don’t know how you can call Newton selfish when you see how he’s laid his body out all year long. Between scrambling, diving and launching himself over defenders into the end zone, he’s been anything but selfish. His body has been put on the line plenty enough. If you want to think he made the wrong decision in that moment, you could certainly make the case. But no one had anything to say about this supposed flaw of his in the other four to five months of the season. To write him off as selfish is just ridiculous.
