Cam Newton's Release Best for Panthers Moving Forward, Says HC Matt Rhule

The biggest move of Matt Rhule's first season in Carolina came last month, when the Panthers moved on from longtime quarterback Cam Newton after they signed Teddy Bridgewater. 

Rhule said the move, while polarizing, is best for the franchise.

"We felt in the end, the best thing for the team was to sort of move forward," Rhule told reporters on a Zoom call Wednesday. "I have no doubt he will play well. We just felt it was the best thing for us moving forward."

Newton had been the Panthers' starting quarterback since the team took him No. 1 overall in 2011, winning the 2015 NFL MVP and leading Carolina to the second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. His performance has waned since that brilliant campaign, however, due in large part to a combination of injuries and ineffective skill-position talent around him.

Newton played nearly the entire 2018 season with a shoulder injury that required offseason surgery and lasted only two miserable games in 2019 before undergoing an operation on a Lisfranc injury. More than two weeks after his release, no team has signed him, due in part to the fact they cannot have him in their facilities amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Newton said in an Instagram interview with Chris Paul (via ESPN):

"It's so much possibility right now for me, but the fact that this corona situation has hit—I'm not a person to blame or do any of that things, man, it's business. But at the same time, I think I have been affected in a lot of ways, and it's just [unfortunate]. But yeah, at the end of the day, man, I'm going to let the ball play how it play, man, and go from there."

Rhule is in his first season as Panthers coach after three seasons at Baylor, as he turned the Bears around from 1-11 his first year to 11-3 in 2019. Carolina appears to be following a blueprint Rhule put together during his college years, jettisoning stalwarts in favor of a full-scale rebuild.

It's possible, if not likely, that Bridgewater himself is viewed as a bridge to the franchise's next quarterback taken at the top of the draft.