In Midst of Super Season, Cam Newton Is NFL's True MVP
If you polled 100 NFL fans and asked them who the 2015 NFL MVP was entering Week 10, it's a safe bet the overwhelming majority would pick New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
There's no denying that Tom Terrific is having an excellent season for New England—one of the best seasons of his long and storied career.
But if the MVP award really is supposed to go to the league's most valuable player, then Superman should ultimately get the nod.
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Because in leading the Carolina Panthers to a perfect 9-0 record, Cam Newton has done more with less than either of the other leading contenders.
Granted, if you look at the MVP as nothing more than a statistical competition, Newton doesn't have a chance. His passing stats pale in comparison to Brady's and those of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton, who helms the other undefeated team entering Week 10.
| T. Brady | 67.8 | 338.1 | 24 | 3 | 113.5* |
| A. Dalton | 67.4 | 278.3 | 18 | 4 | 111.0 |
| C. Newton | 56.3 | 226.3 | 15 | 9 | 81.4 |
And sure enough, even though Newton set a career best by completing his first 11 passes in Sunday's 27-10 win over the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, his numbers were hardly eye-popping.
The former No. 1 overall pick finished the day having completed 21 of his 26 passes for 217 yards and a touchdown. He added another 23 yards and a touchdown on the ground.
Those passing stats sound like something Brady would peel off in a half.
While Newton's stats may not measure up to Dalton's or Brady's, they also don't come close to telling the whole story, as USA Today's Jarrett Bell (an Associated Press MVP voter) told Joseph Person of the Charlotte Observer:
"In Cam's case, it's interesting because you've got to kind of look at the details to really be convinced. If you look at the stats there's no chance, right? Even with him being a running quarterback, you say, ‘How many touchdowns and what's the completion percentage?' But as you watch them play and watch what he does to impact the games, then his case is so strong.
"
That's the thing. As Bell put it to Person, "It's based on being most valuable, not necessarily the most outstanding or the biggest stats or whatever."
Good luck making a case that any other player in the NFL has been more integral to his team's success in 2015 than Newton.
In New England, Brady has the league's best tight end in Rob Gronkowski. One of the NFL's best wide receivers in Julian Edelman (well, had, anyway). The Patriots crank out productive running backs faster than Taco Bell cranks out bad Mexican food.
In Cincinnati, Dalton has a superstar wide receiver in A.J. Green. Arguably the NFL's best one-two backfield punch in Giovani Bernard and Jeremy Hill. An emerging tight end in Tyler Eifert.
Newton has tight end Greg Olsen and...Corey Brown? Ted Ginn?
To say that Newton has the least talented corps of skill-position talent at his disposal is an understatement. He's quite literally doing more with less.
And Newton's best pass-catcher (Olsen) told Person that Newton's doing it at an MVP level:
"I don't think stats and measurables and all that stuff do him justice because I don't think there's anybody else in the league that impacts the league like he does. And I don't think you can always quantify that. I think you have to watch the game. I think people that know football, that watch the games, they understand what we're doing, what he's doing, and it's not a statistic competition.
"
Olsen's right on more than one count. It just isn't fair to compare the numbers of Newton to players like Brady or Dalton. It's apples and oranges. Not that Newton hasn't improved by leaps and bounds as a pocket quarterback, as Titans outside linebacker Brian Orakpo told Person:
"When he first came into the league, he was on the rise but he was using a lot of his athletic ability. But now he doesn't have to rely on that so much.Now he's just kind of like a pocket quarterback when need be and just making his reads, making his progressions and then breaking the pocket when he needs to make a play when everything falls through.
So, he's definitely stepped his game up to a whole other level from when I've seen him years ago.
"
And of course, Newton is much more than just a pocket quarterback. It's still relatively early in his career, but as ESPN's Trey Wingo reported, Newton's double dip Sunday put him on a collision course with history:
Newton has added 366 yards on the ground. He leads the NFL in the percentage of runs that result in first downs. His sixth rushing touchdown Sunday tied Newton for second in the league with Chris Ivory of the New York Jets—among running backs.
Part of what makes Newton difficult to compare to the other MVP candidates, what makes him so hard to quantify, is that there just aren't any players to compare Newton to.
Quarterbacks built like fullbacks just don't come around, well, ever.
Newton, for his part, told Person there's only one stat that matters to him.
"The best stat I've got going for me right now is wins and losses," the Auburn product said. "That will always reign supreme over anything, any stat, any award that I've gotten. Statistics is all about wins and losses."
Make no mistake. So long as the Patriots keep winning, this argument is moot. The Panthers could go 16-0 with Newton rushing for 1,000 yards and passing for 3,000, and it won't matter if the Pats run the table. In that scenario, as in most others, it's Brady's world. We're all just living in it.
Because the MVP isn't really about the MVP. For all intents and purposes, it's the most outstanding player award. And Brady's gaudy numbers in 2015 make that a hard point to argue against.
But if you really do want to talk about the most valuable player, the player who has been most integral to his team's success in 2015...
That player is Cam Newton.
Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter, @IDPSharks.
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