One of the former free-agent quarterbacks for the upcoming 2021 league year is going back to his second home. Per Jim McBride of the Boston Globe, the Patriots and Cam Newton are closing in on a one-year deal that will keep Newton in Foxboro through the 2021 season. ESPN’s Adam Schefter has the contract near $14 million, per a source.
Newton signed a one-year deal with New England in July, 2020, and was Tom Brady’s primary replacement in a season where Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels didn’t give him much in the way of targets. Newton completed 242 of 350 passes for 368 passes for 2,658 yards, eight touchdowns, 10 interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 82.9 with Jakobi Meyers, Damiere Byrd, James White, and N’Keal Harry as his primary receivers. Newton also had little time to get the hang of his new playbook in a truncated offseason, and contracting COVID during the season certainly didn’t help.
It didn’t quite work out as Belichick might have envisioned, though the coach had a lot of good things to say about his quarterback.
“Bill Belichick’s praise for Cam Newton throughout the 2020 season wasn’t an act,” Ben Volin of the Boston Globe wrote in February. “Multiple sources who have spoken with Belichick this offseason said he does nothing but rave about Newton and the effort the quarterback put forth in 2020. The only problem Belichick is concerned with is Newton’s arm strength, with Newton having suffered multiple shoulder injuries in the last five years. In 2019, Newton acknowledged on his YouTube channel that his injuries sapped his ability to throw downfield.
“But Belichick did seem to genuinely enjoy coaching Newton, and multiple sources said they would not be surprised to see Newton back with the Patriots, especially if he’s willing to take another cheap contract (though probably not minimum salary again). But everyone also expects the Patriots to draft a quarterback in the first few rounds.”
Newton has said similar things about a potentially happy return.
“Yes, hell yes,” Newton said in February. “I’m getting tired of changing, bro. I’m getting to a point in my career where I know way more than I knew last year.
“Doughboy [N’Keal Harry] knows me. Jakobi [Meyers] knows me. Bud [Damiere Byrd] knows me. The young tight ends know me. The younger guys that are going to come in know me,” he said. “Like, we’re still trying to flush out the 20 years of how it used to be. And I’m going in and I’m saying, ‘That’s not me.’”
Belichick’s respect for Newton goes back to at least the 2017 season, when he waxed rhapsodically about the quarterback in the week leading up to a game between the Patriots and Panthers.
“I think when you’re talking about mobile quarterbacks — guys that are tough to handle, can throw, run, make good decisions. I would put [Newton] at the top of the list. Not saying there aren’t a lot of other good players that do that, but I would say of all the guys we played recently in the last couple of years, I think he’s the hardest guy to [defend]. He makes good decisions, can run. He’s strong. He’s hard to tackle. He can do a lot of different things. He can beat you in a lot of different ways. We saw that in the game in 2013. I would put him at the top of the list. I’m not saying the other guys aren’t a problem, because they are. But he’s maybe public enemy No. 1.”
Newton proved the title true in a 33-30 Panthers win by completing 22 of 29 passes for 316 yards, three touchdowns and one interception, rushing eight times for 44 yards and another touchdown. The Patriots’ usually disciplined defense had no consistent answers for Newton’s brilliance on that day.
There’s also the fact that Newton had familiarity with New England’s Erhardt-Perkins offense after running similar iterations of that system with the Panthers for years.
Can Newton succeed with a better group of receivers? It would certainly help. And he does give the Patriots a reliable bridge as they transition to the next potential franchise quarterback in the post-Brady era.