From Week 1 through Week 12 of the 2018 season, Cam Newton completed 69.6% of his passes for 2699 yards, 22 touchdowns, and seven interceptions. Only eight quarterbacks had more touchdown passes in that span. Only five had a higher completion percentage. Only six had a higher quarterback rating than Newton’s 103.7.
And then, it all fell apart.
Newton had been dealing with shoulder issues throughout the 2018 season, and the Panthers finally shut him down after a Week 15 performance against the Saints in which he completed 16 of 29 passes for 131 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception. Newton’s injuries had clearly gotten the better of him — he could barely throw the ball deep at all, the interception came on an end zone fade to receiver Devin Funchess from the New Orleans 13-yard line, and there was no rocket sauce on that throw. At all.
Funchess could have done more to body cornerback Eli Apple out of the play, but this was the end of a long period of frustration for Carolina’s now former franchise quarterback.
“I guess if we have to have that conversation, we have that conversation,” Newton said a few days later about the end of his season, per the Charlotte Observer, via CBS Sports. “I’m not looking forward to that conversation.”
There was simply nothing to do about the injury.
“It doesn’t matter how much you push,” Newton said. “Ice, anti-inflammatories you take… I mean, trust me, I did it. Acupuncture. Massages. It’s just not been a time that [a] night has gone by without me getting some type of work done on my arm.”
Newton came back for the 2019 season, completing 50 of 89 passes for 572 yards, no touchdowns and one interception before the foot injury shut him down yet again.
Newton was officially released on Tuesday by the team that took him first overall in the 2011 draft. It was hardly a surprise, as the Panthers had signed Teddy Bridgewater, a now-successful injury story, to a three-year, $63 million contract on March 17. The only thing left was to discern if Newton had any trade value, and with all player physicals on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was no official way to know that Newton was over the shoulder issues of 2018, or the foot injury that ended his 2019 season after just two games. Thus, no trade value, because no team was going to take on his $21.1 million cap hit for the 2020 season with so much uncertainty.
Then, there was this news around the time of Newton’s release:
Cam Newton had a physical in Atlanta yesterday coordinated by the Panthers and his agency team, per sources. Newton passed the physical and is healthy, per source, with both his shoulder and foot “checking out well and he is hungrier than ever and eager for the next opportunity.”
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 24, 2020
If that’s true, and Newton is ready to proceed with his career at age 30, his future becomes one of the NFL’s most fascinating stories. Most likely, no team will be able to get in a room with Newton and discuss anything beyond the abstract and hypothetical for months, which could lead to his being signed around the time of training camp and the preseason.
But even in his truncated 2019 season, there were a couple of highlights that make you think there’s still more than a little left in the tank. Like this 44-yard completion to receiver Curtis Samuel against the Buccaneers in Week 2 that was all arm…
…or this 41-yard drop in the bucket to tight end Greg Olsen.
Iffy coverage by cornerback Vernon Hargreaves and linebacker Kevin Minter, respectively? Absolutely. That’s what the Bucs did early in the season before they turned their defense around. But Newton still had to make those throws, and he did so after issues with the structure of his throwing arm that made him a non-factor not too long before. Newton completed three passes of 20 or more air yards in those first two weeks of the 2019 season — he had completed just 12 in the entire 2018 campaign.
Newton’s performance against the Bucs came after a 30-27 Week 1 loss to the Rams in which he completed 25 of 38 passes for 239 yards and that one interception — an idealized pass to Olsen that misfired and was intercepted by linebacker Cory Littleton.
“I just rushed it,” Newton said after the game. “Me and Greg got a great rapport. He’d be a good charades partner for me cause I know exactly what he’s thinking, and in that specific time, I was just late to it.”
Newton was rusty, and he admitted it. Much was made of the fact that the Littleton interception marked the seventh straight game in which he’d thrown a pick. But outside of his four-interception aberration against the Bucs in Week 13 of the 2018 season, Newton didn’t throw more than one pick in any of those games, and he threw nine touchdowns in that span. All of the touchdowns came between Weeks 10 and 13, right before the injury situation became bad enough to shut Newton down. Newton threw 24 touchdowns to 13 interceptions in the entirety of his 2018 season, which gave him a higher touchdown rate (5.1%) and a lower interception rate (2.8%) than his 2017 season.
We don’t know what might have happened had Newton stayed healthy last season and was able to build on those throws to Samuel and Olsen against the Buccaneers in Week 2. But the Cam Newton a lot of people are talking about on the occasion of his release from his only NFL team — the one that’s been ruined by too many hits in and out of the pocket, and too many injuries to ever mount a reasonable comeback — doesn’t resemble the one who made those throws against Tampa Bay.
What’s the timeline? Beyond Adam Schefter’s tweet, here’s what new Panthers head coach Matt Rhule said of Newton’s recovery at the 2020 scouting combine.
“I don’t think we should spend too much time on timelines. I think the timeline’s gonna depend on how his body responds to the treatment. He’s doing a great job in Atlanta and in Carolina. He has his own system sort of set up through the medical people to get himself ready. The biggest thing is we need to get him cleared, but after that we need to have a really, really disciplined return-to-play program so that when he comes back, he comes back full speed. Because we haven’t really seen a healthy Cam for two years. He’s one of those guys, he’s such a competitor, he’s gonna go out there, he’s gonna play.
“So we need to make sure we do our job that we get him healthy. I really don’t care if he’s full speed until September. Now I’m sure on his end, he’ll say I’ll be ready before there. But we have to make sure we have a process, we bring him back slowly. And with the new system, with Joe in his first year in the system, we have to make sure he’s in the meetings and all those things, that he learns the system. His talent, there’s not a question about that. It’s really just a matter of making sure he’s full speed when he comes back.”
Of course, he won’t do that with the Panthers.
Yes, Cam Newton fell apart at the end of the 2018 season. The reasons why are well-documented. And yes, he started out slow in 2019. The reasons for that are understandable. And yes, we don’t know what would have happened had be stayed healthy. But for a lot of quarterback-desperate NFL teams, it’s going to be worth it to find out what he can do in 2020 and beyond. This isn’t a Jameis Winston story, where Newton’s rogue gene may never be tamed. This is a former NFL MVP who might just be 500 passing attempts from a Comeback Player of the Year award to set next to it.
Remember how this article started?
From Week 1 through Week 12 of the 2019 season, Cam Newton completed 69.6% of his passes for 2699 yards, 22 touchdowns, and seven interceptions. Only eight quarterbacks had more touchdown passes in that span. Only five had a higher completion percentage. Only six had a higher quarterback rating than Newton’s 103.7.
And then, it all fell apart.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be put back together again.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”