Cam Newton: 'It's Time For Me to Look Myself in the Mirror'

Cam Newton. Extremely, brutally honest. A leader of men. A quarterback who knows that to be the man your team looks up to sometimes means you have to bunch up your hair, throw on the non-corrective Dr. Bunsen Honeydew fashion eyewear, wrap your grandma’s old kerchief around your head tight, walk up to that podium and face the music. Just the way Johnny Unitas used to.

And if Newton does take look in the mirror, he should see more than just a mashup of 90s Prince and Madea staring back at him. He should see a quarterback who is probably about to go through a coaching change. In all seriousness, I respect his accountability (if not his accessorizing), but this loss wasn’t on him. Ron Rivera owns this one.

Behold the Carolina Special Riverboat Ron drew up with the game hanging in the balance:

And why would you give the ball to Newton there? In a game where nothing was working the two teams combined to convert just 3 of 21 3rd downs? Well, there’s this:

Newton has 101 career QB sneak attempts. The second closest among active quarterbacks is Tyrod Taylor with 39. And he converts them at 83% effectiveness. But Rivera used him as a decoy and went for a shotgun snap who’s only chance of working was Tampa thinking it was too stupid a plan to ever be tried. Keeping the ball out of his hands in that situation is like needing someone to climb up the side of a building and saying, “No. Not you, Spiderman. Any other volunteers?”

With that, and with the Panthers now the first team in the league to get to 0-2, we can safely say that Riverboat is the head coach most likely to find himself standing on plastic sheets with the gun of unemployment at the back of his head. The one saving grace for him though is, on another all around terrible night of Thursday Night Football, somebody was worse than him.