Point vs Counterpoint: 5 Reasons for Buffalo Bills to Draft or Pass on Cam Newto
Is there any player that is talked about more in the upcoming 2011 NFL Draft than Cam Newton? The Auburn quarterback, led his team to the national championship and captured the Heisman Trophy award in the process. The Buffalo Bills met Newton and his agents for dinner the night before the Pro Day this past Wednesday at Auburn University.
Around the league there are whispers that Buddy Nix loves Cam Newton, yet Mel Kiper came out yesterday in a conference call saying that the Bills are just doing their due diligence on him and that they will pass if Newton is on the board.
So what is real and what is smoke? To try to further get to the bottom of this debate, we will try to isolate the top five reasons why Newton should be drafted by the Bills and the top five reasons why the Bills should pass on him.
Then you will have all of the pro and con arguments in front of you to be able to make an easy decision, right?
Point # 1: Reasons to Draft Cam Newton
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Cam Newton is as physically gifted an athlete as the Bills would have ever had at the quarterback position in the history of the franchise. Standing 6' 5" and weighing at 248, Newton is an imposing figure.
When he gets his body in motion and decides he is going to physically challenge a defender, he will be able to win many of those battles due to his sheer size and strength. When a tough half yard or yard is needed to convert a first down, he will be a reliable option to keep the ball and get the yardage. In fact, when defenses are bunched tight to stop the short dive, those are plays he may be able to break in to long touchdowns.
He is fast enough as evidenced by the 4.59 seconds it took him to run the 40 yard dash. Other results from the Combines: a broad jump of 10' 6", a vertical leap of 35" and a 20 yard shuttle race of 4.18 seconds. When you look at all these figures, you have to conclude that he is physically gifted, quick, and big.
Counterpoint #1: Reasons to Pass on Cam Newton
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From Aaron Maybin, to John McCargo, to Mike Williams, there is just too many recent examples of the Bills totally botching their first round picks in the past decade. This one reason more than anything else has been the factor in keeping the Bills out of the playoffs for 11 straight years and running.
The Bills are totally committed to their rebuilding efforts, and until the team is firmly entrenched as a playoff team with consecutive winning seasons under their belt, should they have to feel like they need to take a huge gamble on a player just because he might have a high upside. The downside is what we frequently are left to witness, and it isn't very pretty usually.
The first productive series that Aaaron Maybin turns in would be the first one we would see in his third upcoming year with the team. A calculated gamble at number three sets the Bills franchise five years or possibly even more.
Point # 2: Top Reasons to Draft Cam Newton
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Cam Newton is a winner. A winner in football. Newton started out his notable winning streak when he led his junior college football team at Blinn College to a national championship.
He followed that up by transferring to Auburn University, where he led the Auburn Tigers to a SEC Championship. The comeback win that Newton directed his team over Alabama was a key ingredient to winning the SEC Championship, and that may have been his crowning moment.
Then to top it all off, Newton led the Tigers to the NCAA National Championship with a win over powerhouse Oregon University.
The SEC is one of the most difficult conferences in the country, if not the hardest. His backers think this is all the proof you need that he is ready to go to the NFL.
From the Bills perspective their most notable times of winning were in the mid 1960's when they won consecutive AFL Championships under Jack Kemp, and the four straight AFC Championships under Jim Kelly in the early 90's. Since then, things have been pretty quiet overall in Orchard Park, New York.
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Counterpoint # 2: Reasons to Pass on Cam Newton
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Ah, a Cam Newton press conference. An opportunity for you to get to know the real Cam Newton, right?
If you watch his one-on-one interviews, and he just conducted one with Mike Mayock this week on NFL Network, you will undoubtedly get the sense that his genuineness or sincerity level is non-existent. The reason I say that is take a good look at his eyes when he answers a question. He fails to make eye contact with the interviewer, and is looking off into the distance, as if that is where he needs to go to recite the line-by-line vertbatim answers that he was instructed to give.
Another example of the genuine touch, or lack thereof, was at the Combines, immediately following the "Entertainer and Icon" comments. The first appearance in public and a chance to win back his supporters, and he opts to read off a page with a pre-scripted response.
From that point forward, I knew that I would have to take everything else he said with a grain of salt, because he no longer was going to be "just himself". He is a by-product of "Team Newton" and when you are entrusting the short term and long term well being of your franchise to a product spun out from Madison Avenue, or wherever it is that his team hails, that can be a scary thing.
Point 3: Reasons to Draft Cam Newton
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Cam Newton is a dual threat. During this past season at Auburn, en route to winning the Heisman Trophy, Newton compiled an amazing 20 rushing touchdowns and 20 passing touchdowns in the same season. That accomplishment has only occurred twice before, as Tim Tebow and a quarterback in the same draft class as Newton, Colin Kaepernick of Nevada performed the feat.
To show you in further detail what kind of a dual threat he really is, consider the following. For this past season, Newton had a QB passer rating of 188.15. Folks, that is just an insane number. When you add in that he was the 13th highest rusher in the country, you now begin to appreciate the skills that he possesses.
Counterpoint #3: Reasons to Pass on Cam Newton
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The guy pictured is Jimmy Clausen. He might be the main reason that the Bills do not wind up with Cam Newton. If Clausen had done a better job as a rookie, there wouldn't be such a strong interest in the Carolina Panthers to be checking Cam Newton out at length.
But, Clausen failed to win over the team or the fans, or the front office. With that being the case, Carolina figures that they may never be in this position again to draft first overall, so there is a growing sentiment that the Panthers will never let Newton slip past them with the first pick.
Instead, the Bills need to be prepared to go to Plan B.
Point # 4) Reasons to Draft Cam Newton
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If I told you about Cam Newton's pedigree, would you start to snicker? Did you know that his older brother Cecil Newton Jr. is a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars? Did you know that his dad, the infamous Cecil Newton Sr., was a member of the Dallas Cowboys?
Now I am not making any claims here that the Newtons are the Matthews family, because that would be a stretch. However, there is something to be said for somebody to be able to say that both your father and your older brother are NFL players.
It means that he grew up with it and that playing football is in his blood.
Counterpoint # 4: Reasons to Pass on Cam Newton
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Football IQ. The term is related to how well an individual is able to truly understand the game of football. Do they know how to draw up plays on a chalkboard. Can they diagram x's and o's? Can they learn a play and then spit it back to you ten minutes later after they have been asked different things to get their mind off of that play?
Those are just some of the areas that teams consider when they conduct their short but sweet 15 minute interviews at the Combines. These sessions are intense and designed to see if the person knows their stuff or not. The word that came out of the Combines was that Newton was found to be lacking when it came to evaluating his football IQ. It seems he excels by reacting to what is happening on the field. He might be able to get away with that at the college level, but not in the pro game.
Point # 5) Reasons to Draft Cam Newton
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He will give the Bills team instantaneous name recognition. They will be appearing more on nationally televised games as a result, and will bring greater awareness of the city of Buffalo and the Bills team in general. He will sell jerseys and sell tickets.
He fits the Buffalo Bills style of how Chan Gailey prefers to use quarterbacks. Big, mobile, multi-talented. He doesn't have to play in his rookie year. He can stand there on the sidelines and watch and learn from Ryan Fitzpatrick all year. Sure, he might get in to run a Wildcat formation or two like Tim Tebow did in Denver. But overall, the pressure would be off him in his rookie year and the Bills can work with him behind the scenes to transform his passing technique to be more NFL-friendly.
It doesn't hurt that Buddy Nix coached at Auburn either. He has ties all over the SEC.
Ciounterpoint # 5) Reasons to Pass on Cam Newton
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Character issues. Funny how his image changes so much when he isn't flashing the million dollar smile.
From the play-for-pay arrangements his dad Cecil was involved in, to stealing a lap top from a fellow student, Cam has been involved in controversy. He was caught cheating three different times at Florida, and is one of the reasons he was going to be expelled from the school.
There was the incident when he attended a NBA game with him teammates, and he took a seat at courtside, while the rest of the team sat up in the nose bleed seats. It is sometimes not the big things you do, but the little things you do that speak volumes about your character.
Please understand, I am not saying that a player is expected to be perfect in college and never make a mistake. But I think it is clear that there are some repeated character flaws that popped up during his road from high school to the NFL that make you stop and wonder. We all have made mistakes growing up, but how many of us are about to be drafted in the top five of a NFL Draft?
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