Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton has led his team to Super Bowl 50 in what is being called an MVP-caliber season. But is Cam really a top-tier QB as everyone seems to be making him out to be?
During his one year at Auburn University, Newton led them to the BCS National Championship, which they won against the Oregon Ducks. During that season in 2010-11, Newton threw for 30 TDs and just seven interceptions.
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He also made a big name for himself when he led Auburn back from a 24-0 deficit against a Nick Saban-led Alabama team to shock them in Tuscaloosa. He threw for 242 yards and three touchdowns and ran for a touchdown in the 28-27 victory.
The ultimate recognition came when Newton was named the Heisman Trophy winner for the 2010 season, an achievement not many might have seen coming after the issues he faced at the University of Florida and subsequent transfer to Blinn College in Texas.
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Those numbers at Auburn earned him the first overall pick by the Panthers in the 2011 NFL Draft. In his rookie season, Newton threw for 4,051 yards, 21 touchdowns and 17 interceptions. He also rushed for 706 yards and a career-high 14 touchdowns – numbers which earned him the NFL Rookie of the Year award.
Over the next several years, his passing yards and touchdowns number declined, with the exception of 24 touchdowns in 2013 – and his rushing yards also went down, from 741 in his second year to just 539 in 2014.
In December of 2014, the Panthers found themselves with a record of 3-8-1 and on the outside looking in at the playoff picture. After that, however, the Panthers won four straight to finish the season the season 7-8-1 and won the NFC South after defeating the Atlanta Falcons 34-3 in Week 17.
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In the Wild Card round against the Arizona Cardinals, Newton threw for 198 yards and two touchdowns while adding 35 yards on the ground in a 27-16 win. They would lose the following week to the Seattle Seahawks, ending their 2014-15 season.
Coming into the 2015 season, few had thought of Newton as a top-tier QB in the NFL. He has yet to have a season that could be compared to the greats such as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or even Russell Wilson, who was drafted a year after Newton.
To make matters worse for the Panthers, WR Kelvin Benjamin, coming off a tremendous rookie season where he had over 1,000 yards receiving and 9 touchdowns, tore his ACL during training camp, ending his 2015 season. The Panthers season looked over before it even began, and it looked as if Newton was going to have another mediocre season.
Ultimately, he has proven those who doubted him wrong. He had a breakout season, throwing for 3,837 yards and a career-high 35 touchdowns versus only 10 interceptions. He also rushed for 636 yards and 10 scores as the Panthers finished the season with a 15-1 record and the best record in the entire league.
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One reason that Newton’s passing yard numbers went up was because he switched from being a read-option QB to a pocket-passer. He has limited the number of rushes he attempted and increased the number of passes he attempted while under pressure.
This movement also somewhat hurt the Panthers’ passing game in 2015. According to fivethirtyeight.com, Newton had one of the highest rates of off-target passes in the NFL midway through the season. Since Week 10, however, Newton ranks among the league’s top passers, with a decrease in the number of off-target throws.
But is Newton really worthy of the MVP award? Four times this season, the Panthers led big leads slip – an 18-point lead against the Indianapolis Colts, a 23-point against the Green Bay Packers, a 28-point lead against the New York Giants, and a 31-point lead against the Seahawks in the NFC Divisional Round, while their one loss came to a Falcons team that started 5-0 and missed the playoffs at 8-8.
While Newton and the Panthers have started strong, they have certainly not finished strong. In the second half of games, Newton has struggled at times and his team has had to rely on defense in several games to pull out wins, though it is also worth pointing out that Newton was not on the field against those opponents whom the Panthers’ defense allowed to drive for points.
According to espn.com, in the first half of games this season, Newton has thrown for 2,101 yards and 19 touchdowns. He’s also rushed for 349 yards in the first half. In the second half, however, Newton’s numbers went down. He threw for only 1,676 yards and 16 touchdowns in the second half of games, as well as rushing for only 285 yards.
To be fair, a deeper analysis shows that he has also been clutch when it matters: his fourth-quarter rating this season has been 110.4, with 8 touchdowns and just 1 interception, while his rating has been even higher when the Panthers have been playing from behind, at 113.1 and with a completion percentage higher than Wilson’s, Brady’s, and Carson Palmer‘s completion rate in the same situations.
On top of that, while the Panthers have let big leads slip away, Newton has also led many game-winning drives, including in games against the New Orleans Saints, Giants, and Seahawks during the regular season. The Panthers do lose their big leads, but they always found ways to win games.
While Newton is having a great season and is on his way to an NFL MVP award and a possible Super Bowl title, does this make him a great QB? Top-tier QBs like Brady, Manning, and even Wilson have been excellent in almost every season they have played in the NFL. Newton, on the other hand, has arguably been mediocre at best in his five-year NFL career.
He will most certainly not be remembered as a draft bust, however. His style of play in his early years drew comparisons to other quarterbacks who would rush on many plays when they could not find their receivers, such as Michael Vick and Vince Young.
That being said, Newton’s stats are much more impressive than both Vick’s and Young’s. In their first seasons combined, Vick and Young accounted for 14 touchdowns and 16 interceptions. Newton threw 21 scores in his rookie season, and as far as rushing, Vick and Young combined for 841 combined yards in their first seasons. Newton fell just 136 yards short of rushing for that during his rookie season.
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The Panthers have had one other quarterback who took the team to the Super Bowl, Jake Delhomme in the 2003-04 season. During that season, Delhomme threw for 3,219 yards, 19 touchdowns and 16 interceptions. After taking the Panthers to the Super Bowl, he threw for at least 2,000 yards in five of his final eight seasons, including more than 3,000 yards in three of those seasons. Newton has already thrown for 3,000 yards in all of his five seasons with the Panthers. Statistically, he is the best QB in the Panthers’ young franchise history.
After looking at all of the stats and taking into account his improvement this season to lead the Panthers to the Super Bowl, it is safe to say that Newton is a top-tier quarterback in today’s day and age. Only time will tell if Newton will have another season like this and if this season marks a turning point in his career, but at this point there is no denying that he deserves to be included in any conversation about the best quarterbacks currently in the game.
