The Ringer NFL Show - Instant Reactions to the Patriots Signing Cam Newton | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

We give our instant reactions to the Patriots signing Cam Newton and discuss how Bill Belichick pulled this off, the financial details of Newton's contract, and how Cam changes New England’s offensive scheme and overall potential in 2020. Host: Danny Heifetz Guest: Tyler Tynes and Nora Princiotti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an emergency edition of the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name is Danny Heifitz and I'm joined by my colleagues, Nora, Princiotti and Tyler Tynes. How are you all doing? Great, Danny. I'm doing horrible. It is 1050, 1050 on Sunday night. Cam Newton is a New England patriot. Kevin Clark will be doing a more in-depth episode on Cam signing with New England later on Monday.

but this news was too big to wait. So we're doing an emergency podcast and I'm with the best people in America to do it. So Tyler, this feels like the perfect time for you to tell everyone about a special project you have in the works. How much can I cuss? I mean, you know what? As much as you want.

I'm just here. July 13th, wherever you get your podcast, but especially on a Spotify podcast network, Cam Chronicles is coming to you hot, fast, and heavy. The beat is produced by Isaac Lee. So you know it's going to be a banger. But, you know, we've been all over the country in the last year reporting research and talking to everybody who could really talk about Cam Newton.

And it's going to be here live fresh and hot. You're going to love it. I swear to God, you're going to love it. So, everywhere you can get it through Spotify, July 13th. But otherwise, it's going to be on Apple Music or Apple or however Apple describes the podcast network. Every week you won't get an episode like that. It's going to be the best thing you ever heard in your life. I don't care if you heard, you know, the best Prince albums.

I don't care if you heard the last meek Mill album. It's going to be the best thing you ever heard in your life. because I said so. It's a lot of 13th. The album drops. Humble as always you are. Tyler, what was your immediate reaction when you saw Cam in New England? I was mad as shit. I was mad as shit, all right. I'm not going to lie to you. I was mad as shit. I was kicking it with the homies. I was having a nice Sunday night and camera on my life. So that's kind of where we're at. Here's a thing. You know, anyone who could tell you really anything about football that will tell you that this is not a good thing for both parties is an idiot. Because Cam Newton needs.

a deal like this. He needs a prove a deal coming off a foot injury, the list frank and coming off a shoulder injury where, you know, he had team, they had teammates in the last year telling me that after that torn rotator cuff, his shoulder was literally hanging on by a thread from what they saw in the training room. And so this is a massive prove it deal for Cam Newton. It's a massive deal for the New England Patriots, a team who had no quarterback ready for that locker room, who, for Cam Newton at least, the best offensive line he ever going to play with. And he's done more with less, the Auburn National Championship team in 2010, they sucked.

All right, but Cam Newton was great, and so they figured it out. The Blinn College Football Team Junior College Pirates, that team sucked. But they had a great amount of talent for junior college, but they didn't have anything like Cam Newton. And so if there's one person in all of football, in the last decade who was a transcendent talent, one of the best talents we've ever seen at the quarterback

position, and equally a vanguard for the black quarterback going from 2010 to right now to take a team for a fan base who probably don't want them. But to take a team that can go really anywhere of the best coach that's ever coach football, you can't ask for a better storyline. Let's just hope we play football this year.

So you've got to bounce right now, but you'll be on the NFL show on Monday with Kevin Clark. Whenever Kevin Clark take his horrible jacket off and he called my phone, we're going to be on this podcast, all right? Me and Kevin Clark, we're going to be in a cage with it. I hope he's not wearing a horrible jacket. Tyler, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. you.

Hi, Tyler. Nora, you covered the Patriots for, I don't know, the fall of the dynasty for the last four years, the Boston Globe. What do you make? What was your immediate reaction? You saw on your phone, Cam Newton and the Patriots, and then what was the next thing that went through your head? I think the first thing I did, I just laughed, you know?

And this is, I can't say that this is an unfamiliar feeling of just going, it's so crazy, but it's so obvious. And, like, most of my sort of over. overwhelming thesis of the Patriots is that most of the crazy stuff they do is actually very simple. It's actually just, you know, assessing value, moving on from your mistakes, generally not being dumb. And signing Cam Newton when it's incredibly cheap, almost no cost to do so, he's Cam Newton. of course you do that. It makes all the sense in the world.

And yet no one I think I can speak for at 9 o'clock at night or whenever it was, 8 o'clock at night, at least on the East Coast, was sitting here on Sunday just going, oh, you know what I think would probably make sense to happen now? Cam Newton to the Patriots. But then you start to think about it. And of course it makes all the sense in the world. So history will just repeat itself and then it'll all be over.

Danny is basically what I think. I was blown away because this was something that I think everyone kind of speculated about as soon as Brady left in March. And then the Patriots love to sign people around June because you sign people around the beginning of June. They don't count against your compensatory pick formula so the Patriots can get all their draft picks. And then they didn't. And everyone kind of forgot about it. And then they signed them anyway. So it kind of blows my mind that they are able to get Cam Newton.

But it also kind of strikes me that it's still such a wild card because we just don't know we're getting out of Cam Newton. He's been on and off hurt for basically for the last three years. He's, I mean, an NFL MVP, one of the best college football players of all time, at least for a single season. And the Patriots just picked him up for like a million dollars. How does this happen? The actual contract is a one-year deal.

Ian Rappaport of NFL Network reported has incentives that go up to $7.5 million. So virtually no risk for the Patriots. If he doesn't end up playing, if they cut him, if he gets hurt, it's incredibly cheap. they don't have any cap space really, but I mean, cap space is, I mean,

it's like fairy dust. It's like it's fake. It's like, like, it's like smoke to a wall. It doesn't really exist. So they can figure that out. I will say that is usually true,

but they're really up against it. And they have been up against it for many months at this point and have made a lot of those moves that you would normally make to make magical fairy dust appear in the salary cap, which just reinforces your point that when we see the final numbers in the deal, it's going to be so cheap because they can do an extension, they can figure something out with Joe Tooney,

they have ways to create some space, but this is going to be a dirt cheap contract unless Cam Newton lives up to those incentives, which if he does, since he wasn't playing most of last year, they will not count against the cap this year when the Patriots are really struggling with it. So it's just like how they pull this off time and time again

is I can't call it insane because when you think about it, it's so simple, but it boggles the mind. Here's my question for you. 31 other teams could have done this. Obviously, a lot of teams have quarterbacks, but still, some teams do need quarterbacks. Every team could use Cam Newton as a backup quarterback.

Why the Patriots? Is this just some crazy bet or are they just taking a risk on him? Like, why do you think New England is the team that actually decided to sign him? Well, there's sort of two answers, right? So one, yeah, they are just taking a risk on him. I mean, they took a flyer on Tim Tebow, you know? like if the price gets low enough. Now hold on.

I'll do the other side of this in a second. If the price gets low enough, Bill Belichick is always just going to say, yeah, sure. Let's try it. We'll move on if it doesn't work. Whatever. Everyone forgets Chad Ochosinko was out there

in Super Bowl 46 as a starting wide receiver because they'll just give any veteran just, yeah, sure. Maybe you still got some juice left. Reggie Wayne ended his career as a Patriot. James Harrison is on a Patriot. Oh my God, I forgot about that. Give it a whirl.

So is this the Patriots getting Randy Moss or is this the Patriots getting Chad Ocho Sinko? Is it Cam Newton's done? 31 teams knew it and we're like, we're not going to sign him or just no one knows and we'll see. So I think it is no one knows and we'll see because we are talking about the central issue being one of health. And if that was clear, it wouldn't have gotten to this point with Cam Newton. I don't think where the Patriots could pick him up for so little. but we can't ignore the upside of, you know, a guy who is MVP, a guy who they have flirted for so long for the last few years

with more mobile quarterbacks with guys who could take advantage of the run game and the offensive line that they've built in a way that Brady, even though he obviously had other skills, was not going to be able to. And there is a world in, which this is a really, really perfect marriage for what they've been trying to enhance about the way that they play football.

Why? So this is, I mean, do you think this is the best offensive line that Cam Newton is ever going to play behind because I do? Now we're talking. See, I think that's a really interesting point. Not only is it a really good offensive line and maybe the best he's ever played, people are going to be like, well, his receivers suck. Well, his receivers also sucked when they made the Super Bowl in 2015 and they went 15 and

one. When they went 15 and one, do you know who can't? Newton's receivers were. It was like Jericho Cotcheri, Ted Ginn, and Greg Olson was the leading receiver on the team. That Panthers team had terrible receivers too, but the offensive line wasn't as good as New England's

right now. Yeah, no way. And I mean, they've already, again, they've been building to this place where they're going to be more reliant on that and they have a great defense. But if they go back to some of the concepts that Josh McDaniels tried to make happen with Tebow in Denver, try to leverage some one-on-one matchups,

use the RPO. it could be really, really cool. And he's not going to have to do all that much because of how good their defense is for them to be a competitive team. And I will say that I am someone who this morning didn't think the Patriots were going to make the playoffs. Yeah.

So this morning, the Patriots plan for this season seem to be, Jared Stidham doesn't have to be Tom Brady 2019. He has to be Tom Brady, 2001. You're a game manager on a defensive team that's going to grind out wins. We're going to be run first. Old school football is everyone else is zagging going passing. The Patriots are going to be zgging and they're going to be doing, you know, elite defense built around a secondary with like a pretty cheap pass rush.

Not going to let any teams be able to throw to catch up to us. And Jared Stidham just don't mess up. Don't screw anything up. And now Cam Newton gets to be the game manager and he's the most overqualified game manager maybe in the entire history of football. That's kind of fascinating. This is like the five stages of a Patriot signing, and I'm in the one where you just look at it and go, it was so obvious this entire time, where if he is able to be, if he's healthy, if he's playing, you know, it doesn't need to be MVP Cam Newton, but if it is effective Cam Newton, it's not just that he's a way over qualified game manager. it's that they can run him up the middle and use that athleticism,

use him on those designed runs that were really effective a lot of the time in Carolina, but also just got him demolished and hopefully be better equipped to protect him because they have been building for the last couple of years to have a line and a running game that can take some pressure off the quarterback. So it's almost as if they've created this system that's going to work for someone to go out there and be a game manager. But then if Cam Newton is the Cam Newton that I think we all would love to see play football again, it both fits, but it's so much more than what it was built for, which is it could just be really exciting. I mean, I don't want to get too overhyped about this because-

Get overhyped about it. I just want to sleep. on it, I guess. Man, this could be really cool, Danny. I think we should temper the expectations on the rushing because, I mean, the thing with him has been health for the last four years. So I think that the days of Cam Newton rushing is, I don't want to say over. But the question going forward is the passing.

Obviously, when healthy is one of the best passers in the entire NFL. I think he led the league in touchdown rate his MVP year through like 35 touchdowns or something ridiculous. But the question is, what the hell is the deal with his health? Like, no one knows because, I mean, for those who have been thinking about other things than Cam Newton's shoulder for the last three years, three months, three weeks. A quick timeline, MVP in 2015, they go 15 and one, lose the Super Bowl. There's the whole fiasco about he could have done for the ball or not. And then he had surgery in his throwing shoulder before the 2017 season, the 2018 season, and the 2019 season.

So basically, for three consecutive years, the cloud looming over Carolina was Cam Newton's throwing shoulder for three years in a row. And then in 2018, he played through the bum shoulder for like the last six games. And it was visible. Anyone who, I mean, had eyes and was watching the Panthers for last six weeks. He just couldn't play, but he was kind of being a warrior and like just was going out there. And it wasn't working. And the Panthers, I mean, they just, they couldn't make the playoffs. And then 2019, he goes into the season, he has surgery.

He like, there's like, surreptitious cell phone footage someone took of when he started throwing again. Like, that's how like much mystery was. Fans were going to the Panther facility and trying to like stick phones over fences just to get, footage of Cam Newton throwing a football or not. And then he hurts his foot in the preseason just just before his shoulder got healthy and then goes into this season with the shoulder somewhat healed but the foot injury, which affects his follow through.

So he's not really able to follow through in some passes. And that kind of makes it have to overcompensate in the shoulder. Gets put on injury reserved to four games with this Liz Frank injury in his foot. They cut him to save $19 million. And then no one signed him until today. So we haven't really seen Cam Newton healthy since like 2016. Right, which, and again, we're working through this together emotionally, Danny. Obviously, that could be bad, right?

He could not be healthy. He could not make the team. All of these things are- That's in the range of outcomes here. It's in the range of outcomes. However, now I feel like my Overton window with Cam Newton has just shifted. I can feel it like every single moment because what if he is healthy? Have we even considered this?

Like, what if his body is a place where he can actually get it together? I know that back in March, February March, the definite sense that I got was that teams were thinking about the foot. You know, it's never great when a quarterback's throwing shoulders had that much work done. But I think the foot is not to be ignored because that's a really tough injury. It's a Lysfranc injury that just can affect how a guy plants his foot in the follow through like you were saying. and that can be a toughie. And I think that that was what teams were saying they were kind of worried about

and skeptical just in terms of who was going to be interested in him. So totally. Like the range of outcomes is incredibly wide here. What is not wide is, you know, sort of the range of harm that could be full of Patriots if this goes badly. And- Why do you say?

that. I mean, Jared stood him still on the roster. Well, right. They could be a bad team, but if they were going to be a bad team, they would have been a bad team before. Oh, yeah, I don't, yeah, this is a fairly risk-free move. This is all upside of no risk. Right. And so for CAM, it could really go, you know, we, we don't know. There's a lot of uncertainty there, but it really is kind of all upside for the team because either it's they have what they had before or, you know, minus a million bucks or so and no one cares. And if he is good, the possibility is just, oh, man.

All right. So let me paint you the scenario here. Cam plays. Cam's the starter. He's not 2015 Cam. He's obviously not himself. But he's a starter. He's somewhere between what we saw in 2015 and what we saw of him in 2019.

But he's a game manager. He's the most overqualified game manager in NFL history. Do the Patriots win the Super Bowl this year? Oh, probably not. But I think they would go to the AFC championship. Can they beat the Ravens or the Chiefs with Cam Newton? Because that's really what this all comes down to, right? The AFC is a two team race between the chiefs and the Ravens,

and then the Patriots are like teetering on the edge of can they compete with them? Can they? Yeah, they can. I'm not picking game manager Cam Newton and the Patriots with that group of receivers to beat Patrick Mahomes. But it's not crazy. It's Bill Belichick. It's interesting because Bill Belichick is one of the best chess players of any coach in NFL history

and what you said earlier in this podcast about so much of what they do is simple. And so much of what the Patriots do in a given game is simple. I mean, even one of his little tricks of like the punters, everyone jokes about Bill's obsession with punters. But it's like he likes left-tated punters because a lot of punt returners don't practice catching a ball that spins off someone's left foot. They only practice from catching a right foot. A lot of it's simple innovations in a player like Cam Newton is, first of all, just not Tom Brady means that we don't even know who Bill Belichick is. We know who Bill Belichick

has been coaching with Tom Brady at quarterback for 20 years. We've gotten little taste and bits of like, oh, what would he do if he had Jacoby Preset? Here's two games of Jimmy Garoppolo. Here's a season with Matt Castle. But we actually get to see creativity from the best coach of all time now. That's where I get really excited, especially with Josh McDaniels who's been there forever. I just, that's where I kind of my football nerdiness kind of comes out with what are they going to do? And I kind of, the upper bound of this, the most exciting part is of Cam really is himself, what the Patriots offense will be able to do with this

limited role because they don't have a ton of receiving talent. But he does have more protection. If he is able to move around a little bit, I think that'll be what will be most interesting to me just because, again, they've flirted with the guys who have a little bit more mobility

than Brady. And there are so many more mobile quarterbacks in the NFL in general now. And it's something that I think, just sort of academically, at least in Boston, has been talked about in terms of just Belichick really want one of those guys? What would he do with them? And it hasn't really ever been put to the test. And it would be very cool to see that. Big year for Josh McDaniels, too, if he could do sort of a big up job with Camer's cinema or whoever it was, it's going to

look really good for him. But it will be interesting, just given that they don't, you know, they don't know what Camp's health is totally, or at least I'm guessing they don't buy the amount of money that he signed for. And Sidham and Hoyer being their other guys, those are not similar players. So it's kind of a neat thing for McDaniels to chart the rest of the course for training camp and getting ready for the season, both evaluating those guys,

and then also just figuring out what the offense is going to look like because it would be different if it were Cam Newton or Brian Hoyer, or Jared Sidham. Hopefully. But look, I don't see Cam as a mobile quarterback until it happens. Until we see a Patriots offense that is not a packet, like a pure pocket dropper, I think Cam's going to be just a pocket quarterback. And I will believe that they're going to use him as a runner when I see it.

I just don't think that's going to happen for a lot of reasons. Nor, I have some trivia for you. Oh, God. Cam Newton set the NFL record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback. Whose record did he break? Whose record? I don't know. Steve Grogan

Patriots quarterback Steve Grogan had set the record for most rushing touchdowns and now Cam Newton has returned to his destiny which is to be a combination of Tom Brady

and Steve Grogan there we go we're back that's hysterical Nora thank you so much I'm going to get dragged for not knowing that around here it's okay

Nora thank you so much and again I know that we apply nuance and there's so much about this we don't know but yes or no the Patriots can win the Super Bowl

just yes or no. Wait, Will or Ken? Yeah. Will. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Oh, no. Well, you already said it's too late. All right. We got to go. Thank you, Nora. Thank you, Tyler. Check out Tyler on the Ringer NFL show with Kevin Clark today on Monday, even though for us,

it's still Sunday. And check out Tyler's podcast, Cam Chronicles. It is coming on July 13th. You can listen to it on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It's going to be fantastic. Thank you. And God damn it. Patriots did it again.