Cam Newton Opens Up About His Injury, Says He'll Be Out "Until He's 100%"

This is maybe the most open and honest I’ve ever seen an active professional athlete talk about an injury. Especially a football player, where if the opposing team knows you have an injury they’re going to do whatever it takes to take advantage of it. Gregg Williams would pay north of a million dollars for someone to dive at Cam’s legs several seconds after a play was over just for a meaningless Week 9 victory.

And while Cam opened up and was exceedingly honest, he still isn’t being as honest about this situation with himself as he needs to be. He’s talking about if the team is rolling “if and when he gets back” they’re just going to hand him back the reins and everything is going to be gravy. Which, yanno, isn’t how football works at all. I have no idea how good Kyle Allen is, was, or can be. I do know if the Panthers keep rolling with Allen under center there’s no way they’ll switch back in the middle of this season. The NFL doesn’t give a fuck about anyone. Never has never will. Ask Tony Romo, ask Drew Bledsoe, ask Joe Flacco, ask Eli Manning. Number one overall pick, highest paid player on the team, Super Bowl MVP, League MVP, it’s never mattered. What have you done lately?

I believe Cam wants the Panthers to succeed. I believe he’ll play quarterback professionally as a starter again at a high level. Probably in Carolina, if I had to bet. But I also believe it wont be ’til next season, and if he’s as serious as he claims to be about healing and getting back to 100% that’s probably for the best. He needs to get on the Andrew Luck plan. Not the “retire unexpectedly to become a contractor” plan, but the “sit out for an entire season, barely move so that your body can recover from a lifetime of getting mollywhopped by other grown men” plan that Luck deployed two years ago. Cam’s been in car accidents, been taking hits for decades, been in and out of the operating room more times than he can remember. If he mentally doesn’t believe he can pick up ONE yard anymore, which he admitted as much in this video, then he’s not “two-four” weeks away from being back to 100%. Not even close.