Cam Newton, Face of Panthers, Showed Zero Grace in Defeat

[The BIG Mouth That Wrote Bad Checks]

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There was no humiliation to be found in
Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton’s performance on the
field at the Super Bowl. The Denver Broncos’ defenders charged
like banshees and werewolves, coming over and under and hurtling
around the Panthers’ blockers.

The young quarterback was sacked six times, and fumbled when the
man-mountain known as Von Miller tossed him to the turf. He
scrambled gamely and tossed some brilliant javelin throws. But
if his was a less than stellar night, that can happen on the
grandest of stages.

His humiliation came after the game, however, and it was self-
imposed.

Newton, 26, an ebullient, intelligent, gifted quarterback,
decided to act in his moment of truth like a 13-year-old. He
slouched into the interview room late, well after many of his
teammates — rookies and veterans alike — who gamely answered
painful questions.

He took a seat, a blue sweatshirt hood pulled low over his face.
He made eye contact with no one. What did he make of the game?
Was he surprised? How could he explain? ... The reporters’
questions, not a surprise in the batch, were framed gently, as
if put forward by dimwitted therapists. For more than a minute,
Newton stared at the floor, scratched his chin and sulked.

Anything he would do differently? “No.”

What did his coach tell the team? “He told us a lot of things.”

Did the Denver defense take away Carolina’s running lanes? “No.”

He offered a few more monosyllables and walked away.

It was as if Newton was intent on taking his magical season, his
jumping jacks and dabs and evident leadership, and poking a hole
in its side. He let his charisma and leadership drain away, to
be replaced by a soup of the sour and the petulant. And in doing
so, he confirmed the judgment of more than a few Broncos
defenders, who spoke afterward of trying to push him off his
game psychologically.

The postgame news conference can be a numbing rite of passage,
when aching and bruised and torn men must take a round of
questions before leaving their season in the rearview mirror.
Some questions can be cringe-worthy, although most are matter-of-
fact. The Panthers rookie wide receiver Devin Funchess took
question after question. “It was playoff ball, man, they
exploded off the ball,” he said. “It hurts.”

And their big defensive end, Charles Johnson, spoke of not
having “the energy we usually have.”

“We didn’t execute like we usually do,” he added.

Over in the corner of the interview room, only the top-paid
player on the team, the marquee man, came up short.

So often we feed our perceptions through the desultory sausage
maker of race, and Newton’s postgame performance is being
treated on Twitter as a referendum on such questions. This is
unfortunate, not to mention silly. Newton’s Panthers teammates
and coaches who stood and answered questions, painfully, gamely,
were black, white and Latino, veteran and rookie alike.

Grace in defeat observes no racial litmus test. The white
Detroit Pistons center Bill Laimbeer was a graceless cad in
defeat. Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, to name two, were sterling
gold. Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich has turned surliness into a
shtick that should be beneath him. Patriots quarterback Tom
Brady behaved well two weeks back, as did Seahawks quarterback
Russell Wilson the week before that.

And so, on and on it goes. It’s simply pleasing to come across
an athlete who in the face of, yes, inevitable and not terribly
interesting questions, and on the heels of a tough defeat,
carries himself well. And it can be a part of the elixir that
constitutes leadership, as the Broncos defenders suggested.

Newton did not put up a particularly poor effort in the game,
which was hardly one for the ages, this penalty-strewn,
butterfingered, butter-toed exercise in Denver outlasting its
opponent. Peyton Manning, the ancient mariner of a Broncos
quarterback, was reduced to gesturing and fakes, and little
more. His team was inert, the offense consisting of a mind-
numbing set of nowhere runs and Manning passes that went a yard
or two, or three.

Manning’s throws resembled whiffle balls; one hung so softly in
the air that defensive end Kony Ealy simply reached out and
intercepted it with a single hand.

The Broncos’ defense was brilliant, except when its cornerback
Aqib Talib grabbed at an opponent’s face mask and tried to twist
his head off like a mad farmer with a chicken. Talib received
three flags in the first half; in most sports, he would have
been sent to the showers. He said those penalties were a bunch
of nonsense, although he said it in stronger terms, adding, “One
I just did on purpose, and I just had to show him.”

Then Talib talked about how special it was that his children
watched him that night. That passed for a heartwarming N.F.L.
moment.

The mesmerizing figure, however, was Newton, who is prodigiously
talented. As an ESPN writer noted, Newton, at 6-foot-5 and 245
pounds, is bigger than any player on the Green Bay Packers’
championship team in Super Bowl I. He reads offenses with
intensity, and he is that rare pocket passer who can dodge and
break off loping runs.

He can be, in other words, an awful lot of fun to watch.

He resembled a water bug in a jar Sunday, jumping this way and
that; he was game in taking on that relentless Broncos defense.
For long stretches of the second and third quarters, he was the
most exciting player on the field. He finished 18 of 41 for 265
yards, and he fumbled twice.

By the final quarter, however, his body language spoke to demons
taking possession of his house. Denver linebacker DeMarcus Ware
laid him out. As Newton bounced off the turf, he gave an annoyed
look, a princeling not accustomed to such tough handling.

He wandered to the Panthers’ sideline. The Panthers trailed just
16-7. Three weeks ago, I had watched Newton rally his team,
doing jumping jacks, leaping and exchanging chest bumps with his
receivers and runners.

Not now. He wandered down the sideline and stared into space.
Then he put his hands on his knees and stared at the ground for
14 seconds.

Later, slowly, he wandered back to his bench. He walked to his
offensive line — a porous lot this night — and slapped two
hands. Then he wandered off again.

Afterward, the Broncos said this was the Newton, the young star
too easily rattled and perhaps not yet equal to his moment, they
hoped to unleash.

“Hey, when things don’t go his way, we see the body language —
it’s obvious,” Broncos safety T.J. Ward said of Newton. “That’s
what we wanted to do. That was our intent: to come in this game
and get the body language going. We didn’t want the happy, fun-
spirited, dabbing Cam. No, we want the sulking, upset, talking
to my linemen, my running backs, ‘I don’t know what’s going on’
Cam Newton — and that’s what we got.”

CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY
528
COMMENTS
And that on-the-field Cam was prologue to the postgame
denouement.

This need not be Newton’s epitaph. Newton has fine mentors from
whom he can learn grace, among them the Hall of Fame quarterback
Warren Moon, who endured years of racially tinged self-imposed
exile in Canada in the 1980s before an N.F.L. team consented to
allow him to take snaps and lead a team.

Newton’s talents are many and varied. His challenge is to prove
himself equal to leading his fine team to the Super Bowl.

Comments:

Skydog Sky Woodland hills ca 11 minutes ago
So much for the " very explosive offense" a lot of naysayers
were saying the broncos were the underdogs
Ayyy? Superman met his kriptonite! !!! Who's laughing now????

Reply Recommend
myes1958 Chgo 11 minutes ago
Physical talent, yes, of course. Maturity, professionalism
and/or leadership traits? He whiffed. Grab some bench.

Reply Recommend
Dadof2 New Jersey 11 minutes ago
To be fair, Cam Newton was battered and shell-shocked by the 2nd
quarter, with his mouth open trying to get enough air.
And yet, when the game was over, he was gracious to the Denver
Broncos, and exchanged kind words and smiles with Peyton Manning.
It was only after, when attacked by the piranhas, er, I mean
reporters that he was sullen, giving them even more grist to
gleefully post to their newscenters.

But he's young yet, and, hopefully, will learn. He's had a GREAT
season, an awesome season, but the Superbowl went badly for him
because it went badly for his offensive line, who were simply
beaten by the amazing Denver defensive line and linebackers.

Even the young Joe DiMaggio was known to be sullen and sulky
after losses.

Reply 3Recommend

Sixofone The Village 11 minutes ago
“One I just did on purpose, and I just had to show him.”

This is a big reason why I stopped watching football years ago,
except for the occasional Super Bowl. Not that poor
sportsmanship and unnecessary brutality are anything new, but
they just seem uglier to me with each passing year.

So maybe I'll tune in again for SB LII or LIII. Then again,
maybe not.

Reply Recommend
James Bland Alberta, Canada. 11 minutes ago
Hubris was a theme of the ancient Greeks so clearly Mr. Newton
is not the first to fall its victim, though admittedly he does
provide a pretty spectacular example. Although it's been said
that adversity doesn't build character but rather reveals it,
it's reasonable to believe that he will ultimately benefit from
this experience. And if he's looking for role models he need
look no further than his head coach, whom I expect was no
happier with the game than was Mr. Newton but whose own comments
in a post-game interview epitomized sportsmanship in defeat.
Incidentally, if Warren Moon would ever like to visit his land
of "exile" those of us fortunate enough to have watched him play
here "on the cold western prairies" would be thrilled.

Reply Recommend
Marin H Chicago, IL 11 minutes ago
You conveniently left out when Cam answered "we were
outplayed.....we had missed opportunities..." to suit your
article.
And the question that caused him to walk off was inquired how
Cam felt about his team, which we all know is a bait to get Cam
to point fingers or place blame. The media would've loved any
answer that would give them the opportunity to spin it into "Cam
doesn't like his team". So he did the right thing, said "I'm
done" and walked off. Sometimes saying less is more. Tracy
McGrady did the same thing when asked similar questions after
his team was eliminated from the playoffs. I appreciate when
players protect one another from such baiting and trolling.
That's being a team both on and off the field.
It's easy to claim you know how you'd react (apparently with
smiles and joy about "the blessing of playing in the
SuperBowl"?) when you've never been in Cam's shoes. It's obvious
Cam wears his emotions on his sleeve and is equally passionate
about both winning and losing. I'll take his somber short
answers over fake exuberance or a finger pointing, profanity
laced tirade any day of the week.

FlagReply 1Recommend

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panthers-cam-newton.html?_r=0