After transcendent season, Newton can’t take final step
As darkness fell on Levi’s Stadium and the Carolina Panthers’ tilt at glory reached its most critical point, Cam Newton pulled the trademark towel from around his head and tossed it aside.
During the Panthers’ spectacular ride during the regular season and playoffs, spurred by Newton’s emergence as perhaps the most destructive player in the sport, the towel had come to symbolize the 26-year-old quarterback’s state of mind.
He would tug on it and tilt his head back, relaxed and smiling, full of inner chill and relaxation, ready to lay some offensive hurt and a demonstrative dab onto whoever stood in his path.
But when the moment came where dreams hung in the balance and his customary approach had thus far stuttered, it was time for something new. It wasn’t time to smile or laugh or try to convince everyone he was loose any longer.
The towel was gone, and it was time to go, time to separate himself from the gravity of the occasion like a man with designs on greatness should. It was time to pull clear of rival QB Peyton Manning and, more significantly, the all-conquering Denver Broncos defense.
For a few fluttering moments in the third and fourth quarters, it looked like he might do it. Drives would begin and gain traction before skidding to a halt because of penalties, missteps, turnovers, caused by the consistent excellence of the opposition.
Newton was playing catch-up, hamstrung on the scoreboard and perhaps in his psyche by the disappointment of a performance marred by an interception and two lost fumbles, one of them returned by Denver for a first-half touchdown.
Carolina’s own defensive solid- ity, Denver’s play-calling caution and Peyton Manning’s diminished powers gave Newton chance after chance, but he couldn’t capitalize.
Newton wasn’t Superman or SuperCam here, in the final outing of a brilliant season; he wasn’t even a viable version of the performer who was a near-unanimous choice as the league’s most valuable player.
There were none of those devastating drives or dramatic endzone leaps, no opportunities to dab and strut and goof around. All of that fun, all of that freedom of the previous five months was squeezed out and crushed by marauding monsters such as Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware.
Newton hadn’t faced a defense like this before, because there isn’t another to match it in the league. While Denver’s offensive firepower has turned somewhat vanilla with Manning’s advancing years, on the other side of the ball the Broncos are intricate in their complexity and brutal in their execution.
That was what Newton had to counteract if he was to have the perfect outcome here, either with his mind, legs or imagination. Just like Tom Brady two weeks earlier, he couldn’t.
There will be other days surely for Newton, other opportunities for him to scale the kind of heights by which elite quarterbacks are measured. This Carolina team has the tools to maintain its standard of excellence, and one miserable afternoon has not altered the fact that Newton is still the most powerful offensive threat football has to offer.
In all of the ways Denver made the Carolina puzzle look embarrassingly easy to unlock, let us not forget that in 17 out of 19 games this season it was the opposition who was similarly bamboozled.
Newton doesn’t get to etch his name alongside that of Marcus Allen, as the only other man to win the Heisman Trophy, the college national championship, the AP NFL MVP and the Super Bowl, not yet at least.
This wasn’t his coronation, it was the completion of Manning’s legacy. It was a tough lesson to learn, that domination must be completed with the final and most difficult step of all.
The next step is to simply stand again, to pick himself up from this punch to the gut. To rediscover the joy that took him to the brink of triumph and combine it with the inspiration that pain provides.