Cam Newton is the perfect answer to those who say that numbers don’t lie.
In his case, they do. Or at least they don’t tell the total story.
On Sunday, Newton threw four touchdown passes in the first half, then added a fifth in the second half, as the Carolina Panthers stormed to their 10th consecutive victory, beating the Washington Redskins, 44-16.
Overall, this was Carolina’s 14th consecutive victory in the regular season.
Some believe that if Carolina remains undefeated, Newton will challenge New England’s Tom Brady for most valuable player honors. And yet, when you look at the numbers, Newton does not appear in the top 10 of many of the popular passing categories.
Overall passing? No. Passes completed? Passes attempted? Yards per play? Passer rating? Not in the top 10.
Only after Sunday’s performance did he break into the top 10 in touchdown passes.
And yet, Carolina is one of only two undefeated teams and just about everyone I spoke with in the Panthers’ locker room on Sunday said that Newton was a large part — maybe the largest part — of the reason.
Yes, the Panthers’ defense is smashing; it gives Newton the ball in a good position. The running attack is a grinder; one of the best in the NFL. The kicking game is exceptional.
Carolina is only in the middle of the pack as a passing team. And yet the man most responsible for that aspect of the game, Newton, is the team’s acknowledged leader, its heart and soul.
“There are some intangibles that you can’t measure,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera said at his postgame news conference.
I had asked Rivera why Newton was being called the catalyst of the Panthers’ success even though his name was not splashed across the top of the league’s passing categories. Rivera pointed to Newton’s unselfish play, citing Sunday’s statistics as an example: Newton threw two or more passes to five different receivers and at least one pass to four others.
“He is a very unselfish player,” Rivera said.
But that doesn’t account for Newton’s lack of an analytic presence.
Pressed about the numbers, Rivera invoked his former coach.
“I had a coach that I played for named Mike Ditka who always used to tell us ‘figures lie and liars figure,’” he said.
Great line. And true.
Analytics are a bit of a racket. Frankly, I don’t think that all of the front-office executives who sing their praises really believe the hype.
Particularly in football, numbers go only so far: Who won, who lost; how many yards, how many catches. Intangibles need to be taken into account in order to paint a more complete picture: a player’s inner motivation, the ability to will a team to win, knowing when to step up, when to lay back, recognizing when a team needs an emotional lift.
That goes beyond the grasp of statistics and it’s at the root of Newton’s success.
“His energy level that he plays with, I think his teammates feed off it,” Rivera said.
Later in the locker room, Kony Ealy, a Panthers defensive end, agreed. He pointed to the first quarter of Sunday’s game when Washington put up 14 points against a Carolina defense that was slow getting started.
Newton led the Panthers to a score on their second drive and answered with another touchdown after Washington scored.
“Cam’s a great guy for this organization,” Ealy said. “He’s more of a leader this year, hands down on the field, off the field; he’s keeping us in the game.”
Ealy said that Newton’s enthusiasm — as much as his uncanny athletic ability and superb skills — had been a catalyst. The team, he said, enjoys watching Newton enjoy this moment.
“That’s us, that’s him,” Ealy said. “Cam is Cam and that’s what makes him special.”
As he spoke, Rivera walked by. He elaborated on what he had said at his news conference.
“There’s an energy about him that people don’t get because they’re not around him,” Rivera said. “When he makes plays, his teammates rally around him. It’s not just about his numbers. It’s the decision to run the ball the decision to throw the football, to hand the ball off. These are things that have a great impact that cannot be measured.”
In another corner of the locker room, Ryan Kalil, an offensive lineman, talked about what couldn’t easily be quantified about Newton’s influence on his teammates.
“We’ve been down, we’ve been in close games, we’ve been up and finishing these games, we’ve come alive when we needed to,” he said.
Winning is, of course, difficult to accomplish with any consistency. Going undefeated, as New England and Carolina have done so far this season, is infinitely harder, especially with teams constantly making adjustments.
Yet after 10 games, Newton has led Carolina to nothing but victories.
“Cam’s done a really good job of really coming alive when we need him most, when the team needs the offense most,” Kalil said. “He’s done a good job handling our success, he’s done a good job handling some of the negative national narrative about him that I don’t think is warranted.”
That negative narrative was fueled last week by Newton’s extended end zone dance against the Titans.
Kalil explained: “For people who are on the outside looking in, who have preconceived notions about Cam or don’t know him, when you get to be in here, you get to see him behind the scenes, and get to know him and spend time with him, you realize he’s just a big kid and he’s playing a game for a living.”
In his news conference, Newton was asked about the absence of flashy numbers.
“Numbers are irrelevant,” he said. “The most important number right now is in the win column. As long as we keep doing that, I think everything else will take care of itself.”
The ultimate number is a victory in February.
That’s a long, long way off.
Meanwhile, ease up on the analytics.
When it comes to Newton, you’ll have to look beyond the numbers.
In Carolina, he is the evidence of things unseen.
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