Cam Newton is employed to play football, the Patriots have a good quarterback on their roster and the world — the NFL world, at least — makes just a little more sense today.
The news that Newton was signing with New England came out of nowhere Sunday evening (though it did help bury some negative Patriots news) but it was hardly surprising. For as much as the Patriots coaching staff tried to convince Boston media that they loved Jarrett Stidham, it just never made much sense that he, of all people, would be Bill Belichick’s choice to lead the team into the post-Tom Brady era. Especially with an immense talent like Cam Newton — a player who has given Belichick’s famed defense fits in their two meetings — just sitting out there waiting to be signed at a reduced price.
The reduced price ended up being the veteran minimum and a whole bunch of incentives. It’s the famed “prove it” deal, so there’s no risk for the Patriots here (according to reports, the MOST Newton can earn is $7.5 million — or $3 million less than Saints sometime-QB Taysom Hill is scheduled to make per season over the next two years.)
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If Newton is the guy we saw in 2018, when he was putting up MVP numbers before his shoulder was shot, then New England got itself a bargain at the most important position in the sport. If he’s still broken, Belichick can move on without taking a cap penalty.
The only thing that seems to be up for debate is how Belichick and Josh McDaniels will reconfigure the offense to fit Newton’s skill-set. The changes were already being made well before Sunday’s news broke. The Patriots drafted a tight end and an H-back and seemed to be building an offense similar to what we saw in Baltimore in 2019. As I argued shortly after the draft, the power-run, play-action-heavy offense New England appeared to be putting together would work best with a run threat behind center. I’d say the quarterback with the most rushing touchdowns in NFL history certainly qualifies.
But it’s fair to wonder if Newton could hold up in such an offense given his recent injury history. We should also ask if it’s necessary, as the 2015 NFL MVP is so much more than a runner. I’d argue the gap between Newton and Brady — just from a pure quarterbacking standpoint — is more narrow than most people would believe. The one area where Brady clearly owned an advantage was in the accuracy department but I’m not sure if that is still the case with the 42-year-old coming off two consecutive seasons of inconsistent accuracy.
Does the offense really need to change all that much?
Compare Newton’s performance over the first half of the 2018 season to Brady’s in 2019. The numbers look awfully similar across the different types of pass attempts, with Newton actually holding an advantage in most. The most surprising result might be the advantage he holds in the quick passing game, which has been the foundation of Brady’s hall-of-fame career.
Newton will never get credit for it, but he’s as sharp as any quarterback in the league. Carolina’s coaching staff put a ton on his plate and the more control it gave him, the better Newton seemed to be. Here’s former teammate Greg Olsen, in 2017, explaining just how brilliant of a football mind the Patriots are getting:
I don’t think people really realize just how much he understands the game and how well he sees the field. He does things innately that don’t necessarily come naturally to all quarterbacks. He sees things. He feels things. He just has a sense of the bigger picture on the field. You see it on tape and say “I don’t know how he saw it, but he knew something was going to come open.” Some guys just have that natural instinct, and his instincts are really good … We do a lot of stuff before the snap. A lot of two-play checks. A lot of kills at the line of scrimmage. Our no-huddle offense has been very successful and a lot of that falls on him making the calls. I don’t know why he doesn’t get more credit. Obviously, we could speculate.
If New England wants to go fast and run its no-huddle package where the quarterback gets to the line and makes changes based on how the defense is aligned, Newton is more than capable. If they want to load the box and run play-action, Newton, who has been one of the NFL’s best play-action quarterbacks throughout his career, can do that, too. And if the Pats wants to spread things out and work the quick passing game, Newton proved he has that in his bag during the 2018 season when he completed 67.8% of his passes after dropping his average depth of throw to a career-low 7.1 yards, per Next Gen Stats.
The Patriots coaching staff has revamped its offense whenever another quarterback has started in place of Brady. The offense looked different with Jimmy Garoppolo behind center. We saw more half-field reads that didn’t ask the young quarterback to think too much. It looked really different during Jacoby Brissett’s one-game stint as a starter, with the Patriots running some triple option. Obviously, Belichick and McDaniels aren’t afraid to tinker. I just don’t think they’ll have to with Newton behind center.
The one area where the offense will obviously change is the run game. The Patriots have already boasted one of the more diverse run games in the NFL, but with Newton in the fold, McDaniels can really get creative. We’ve already seen him do that in the aforementioned Brissett game, and Brissett is not nearly the threat that Newton is as a runner. But that didn’t stop McDaniels from busting out some funky pistol formations and asking him to read unblocked defenders in the run game.
Unlike most dual-threat quarterbacks, Newton is more a power runner than he is a speed guy. That fits New England’s preferred style of running. Pulling lineman, down blocks, downhill runs? Yeah, that’s the Patriots run game. So, the actual concepts won’t change; there will just be a “read” element to them now, which means the defense will have to account for all 11 players on each in every run play.
Watch the play below. With Tom Brady under center, the defense would have flowed toward Christian McCaffrey, then dropped in coverage once they recognized the fake. But here they have to also account for the possibility of a 6-foot-5, 245-pound QB charging up the middle with the ball — and that’s basically impossible to do.
Newton’s mere presence in the backfield will give the Patriots run game the same boost the Panthers got when they drafted him. We can say this with absolute certainty: If Newton is healthy, New England’s run game will be far more efficient.
Outside of a few more deep shots, the Patriots offense with Newton behind center won’t look that much different than the offense with Brady back there these past two seasons. But if Cam is anywhere close to the player we saw before injuries sabotaged the end of his Panthers career, the offensive output will look a whole lot different compared to what we saw in 2019.
Adding Newton may not be enough to close the gap between the Patriots and the AFC powers in Kansas City and Baltimore, but it gives them a chance that Jarrett Stidham just wasn’t going to provide. At the very least, we can’t leave New England out of the discussion of Super Bowl contenders. That may not be the return to normalcy we’ve all been yearning for these past few months, but it’s something.
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