All eyes on Cam, if season happens
Why do you care about the Dak Prescott franchise-tag situation? Thanks for asking.
Presumed 2020 New England Patriots starting quarterback Cam Newton is on a one-year deal. He’s hunting his future this year.
He needs a season, and he needs to be healthy, and he needs to be good. New England is one of the few places he could go and show he still has it, and theoretically win big. He wasn’t getting that signing with Jacksonville. Cam is betting on himself to have a season worthy of generating maybe his last big payday.
Pro quarterbacks are historically in their prime at around age 29. Those age numbers may be coming down given the near-instantaneous success of modern-era QBs like KC’s Patrick Mahomes (24); Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson (23); or the Rams’ Jared Goff (25), who seems forgotten even though he was in a Super Bowl two years ago and has averaged over 4,600 yards passing and 27 TDs the last two seasons.
Prescott is older than all of those guys; he’d be 27 if opening day happens on Sept. 13 when the Cowboys are slated as the first opponent in the Rams’ new SoFi Stadium digs.
Jerry Jones loves Big Names. Dak Prescott isn’t a Big Name. But Cam Newton is. On Wednesday, Jones decided it’d be better to pay Prescott $31.4 million this year under the franchise tag. Jerry likes options. In six months he’ll know if Dak had a great year… or if Cam Newton did.
Of course Dallas, or anyone, could’ve signed Newton long before the Patriots did. Dallas’ excuse was the fear that Cam in the room would’ve alienated the pro-Dak people.
Now, if Cam is healthy he easily wins the starting job in Foxboro. And they need him to. The schedule is actually pretty salty. Week 2 in Seattle. Week 4 in Kansas City. The Niners in Week 6 (You know … Jimmy G’s team that led the Chiefs 20-10 going into the fourth quarter of the last Super Bowl). In Week 7 they go to Buffalo.
Real talk: Even if you thought Stidham could steer the team to wins in his first three home games against the Dolphins, Raiders and Broncos, the Pats could easily be 3-4 coming home from Buffalo.
A healthy Cam Newton can milk a 5-2 record against that schedule. If the Pats can run the ball at all, let Julian Edelman be Julian Edelman, develop tight end draft prospects Dalton Keene and Devin Asiasi, and get even a little more natural development from N’Keal Harry…
Yes, those are a number of “ifs.” Bet against Bill Belichick and his coaching staff and get back to us how that works out.
Bottom line: If Cam is at or near peak capability, the Patriots-hate will be back, Patriots fans will laugh, and Cam Newton will be laughing all the way to the bank — where Jerry Jones will be waiting if Dak Prescott doesn’t himself win big this year.
But none of this matters, because sports are doomed this year. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Doesn’t matter if statistics are fudged, or outright lied about. Coronavirus is real. Its death toll will soon surpass 140,000 in the U.S. alone.
Baseball is slated to start next week. A handful of star players have tested positive, another batch has decided not to play. It’s the same thing for the NBA, the NHL and eventually will be for the NFL.
Only a handful of them are admitting it, but some players are scared, although some are suppressing their fears and trying to fight on. Remember how you were at age 24… fearless. Thought you were bulletproof. That mindset is no doubt working against some players hoping they don’t lose the Life Lotto.
The erratic handling of the response has cost us all; a global threat can’t be dealt with at the municipal level. Imagine if the world’s response to terrorism was shifted from national governments to mayors and city councils. Dumb. Destined to fail.
It’s cost lives, jobs, and much less importantly, it’s going to cost sports. Politicians, not scientists, are making life-and-death decisions and one of the victims of that ridiculous approach is going to be sports. At some point, a big name is not just going to test positive but show symptoms. Close to home, David Pastrnak didn’t practice Thursday, ruled “unfit.” Is he sick? Boston’s Stanley Cup chances drop by about a third without him.
Zion Williamson of the NBA left the bubble Thursday. New Orleans has zero chance of making the playoffs without him. It sure looks precarious. Sports books must be trembling. Never has betting on who will win a championship been riskier.
A lot of fun was made last week when NBA players started sharing social media posts about how awful the bubble food was. Knucklehead J.R. Smith’s post were hilarious.
These are highly tuned athletes, and they were fed the equivalent of Fyre Festival fare at worst, or JetBlue snack boxes. (Although JetBlue’s PickMeUp cheese box is a deal at $9.) But NBA players couldn’t live on that.
Chris Braley, a former collegiate basketball player and now a Boston personal trainer and nutrition consultant (bodybybraley.com), chuckled when he saw those bubble reviews.
“I did laugh,” said Braley. “It looked like a boarding school’s dinner on the way back from a road game. And that might be harsh on boarding schools.
“Food is extremely crucial to performance, especially in the long-term. If they aren’t eating proper nutrient-dense foods, you’ll see it at the end more than the beginning. All of these players have a routine, a game-day routine. They go to same place to eat, they take nap at the same time, they have the same pre-game snack. For them they’re going to have to get as close as possible to their normal and food is a big part of that.”
According to health.gov, an “active” man in his 20s should consume a maximum of 3,000 calories per day. An All-Southeast Conference defensive lineman trying to make it in the NFL told me he ate 6,000 calories a day just to maintain weight and strength. But that’s for the NFL, where bulk, especially in the trenches, is required.
More on “active man” — health.gov says “for adults, the reference man is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 154 pounds.” That AllSEC player was 6-2, 280. He’d have starved to death on 3,000 calories. Is it different for the NBA? “Those guys are such metabolic beasts they could burn through whatever if they needed to,” said Braley. “For most NBA guys and more specifically the players I have worked with, a typical diet will be between 3,000-4,500 calories depending on the size of the player, and that’s gonna be filled with nutrient-dense foods… salmon, potatoes, eggs and egg whites, and obviously you’re getting healthy greens in.
“Guys have personal chefs… they’re used to 5-star restaurants in every city and that’s the quality of food they put in their bodies to prep for games.”
As for what was first served in the bubble? Again, Braley laughed.
“I have an extremely hard time believing LeBron is eating that.”