2011 NFL Draft: Cam Newton Versus Blaine Gabbert; Who Should Carolina Pick?
By now, it has become fairly clear that the Carolina Panthers do not believe that Jimmy Clausen is the quarterback they had hoped he was. Because of this, most experts believe the Panthers will try again to find their franchise signal caller with this year's first pick of the draft.
Rumor has it that they will choose Cam Newton out of Auburn with that pick; however, all rumors leading up to the draft must be taken with a grain of salt considering all of the game playing and misinformation that teams engage in to hide their true intentions. Is it possible Blaine Gabbert is still in the mix?
Let's assume that we can trust that the Panthers are going to go with a quarterback at the top spot. With that in mind, which quarterback should they trust the keys to their franchise to? We will find out what decision they make on Thursday night in primetime, but I will let you know what decision they should make right now.
First, a look at the case to be made for each player...
The Case for Cam Newton
1 of 5
Quite frankly, Cam Newton is a once in a decade talent. His combination of size, speed and ability is rare enough that coming up with someone to compare him to is a difficult task at best. The closest I have been able to come up with is a pre-injury Daunte Culpepper.
Remember, before blowing out his knee in 2005, Culpepper was very athletic for his size (6'4'' and 260 pounds) and reportedly ran a 4.6 in the 40 (compared to Newton's 4.56). Watching Newton, he may have better instincts as a runner and is probably a better athlete than Culpepper was overall, but the former Minnesota Vikings great is definitely the closest comparison to Newton.
With that in mind, the ceiling for Newton's career is extremely high. Culpepper had one of the all-time great seasons at the quarterback position in 2004. He threw for over 4,700 yards with 39 touchdowns and just 11 interceptions while completing nearly 70 percent of his passes in 2004. Culpepper also had over 400 yards rushing that season.
So using Daunte Culpepper's 2004 season as the benchmark for what Cam Newton could be capable of in the NFL, Newton suddenly starts to look like a no-brainer as the first overall pick.
Imagine you are the Carolina Panthers and are searching for someone to transform your franchise; how could you pass on someone who could be capable of putting up such ridiculous video-game type numbers? If the Panthers want the quarterback who has the highest capacity for greatness, the pick has to be Cam Newton.
The Case for Blaine Gabbert
2 of 5
If you were to go to the lab and create a prototypical NFL quarterback, the creation would probably look a lot like Blaine Gabbert. At a little over 6'4'' and 230 pounds, Gabbert possess ideal size to go along with the athleticism to move around the pocket and keep plays alive and the arm to make every throw necessary in pro football. Simply put, it is hard to think of anything you want in a starting quarterback that Gabbert doesn't bring to the table.
Even though Gabbert comes from a spread offense at Missouri, he may not be as far off from being NFL ready as people think. While some spread offenses in the college game are run first, or even equal parts run and pass, Missouri's is very much a pass first spread (for comparison, Gabbert attempted 475 passes in 2010 and Newton attempted 280). Clearly, not all spread offenses are created equally.
This means that despite having had many of his plays be one read or quick hit plays, he has had more repetitions going through progressions and working through his reads than some quarterbacks coming out of the spread systems. The biggest adjustment Gabbert will have in moving to a pro style offense is likely taking snaps from under center, which, for a player with Gabbert's athleticism, should not be an issue at all.
Also, for whatever it is worth, Gabbert posted a 31 on his Wonderlic test (the average NFL QB scores 25), which leads some experts to believe he will do just fine handling any obstacles he faces while attempting to master a pro-style offense.
The best way to think of Blaine Gabbert is that he is basically Sam Bradford without the injury concerns. Keeping in mind how pleased the Rams were with Bradford last year; the Panthers would have to be crazy to pass on Gabbert.
The Case Against Cam Newton
3 of 5
For all of the talent Cam Newton has, he has almost as much baggage. Whether it be the stolen laptop and rumors of academic cheating at Florida, the alleged pay for play scheme before he arrived at Auburn, or stating that he sees himself as an entertainer and icon, not just a football player while at the NFL combine, Newton just seems to have this cloud of questions following him about his character and maturity.
Whether fair or not, the perception amongst NFL teams and talent evaluators exists that Newton very well may not have what it takes between the ears to be an NFL quarterback. This goes beyond his character and maturity though. There are concerns about whether or not Newton can handle the reads and progressions quarterbacks in the NFL have to go through to be successful, concerns that were not eased any by Newton's below average score on the Wonderlic.
These questions mostly involve how quickly he makes reads and how much he trusts them once he makes them. At this point, Newton appears to trust his athleticism more than his reads and in the NFL that just will not work for very long. Newton had almost as many rushing attempts (264) as he did passing attempts (280) in his one season at Auburn, and many of them were not designed for QB keepers.
Another concern is that he did spend only one year playing major college football. The best thing for a quarterback to improve his decision making is repetitions. Newton had marginal playing time at Florida, then one year of junior college, and finally one year as the starter at Auburn. Newton simply does not have enough high pressure repetitions for an NFL team to trust him making decisions for them on Sundays.
It is a pretty well accepted fact that quarterbacks who lack certain desirable physical traits can make up for it with intelligence and leadership. Unfortunately for Newton, no one in the NFL believes that you can make up for a lack of intelligence and leadership with physical tools.
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The Case Against Blaine Gabbert
4 of 5
The problem with quarterbacks that come out of a system like Missouri's is that it is often difficult to differentiate between how good the player really is and how much of their success was simply a product of the system they came out of. No team wants to draft the next Dave Klingler.
Like many quarterbacks coming out of spread offenses, Blaine Gabbert struggles throwing the deep ball largely due to the fact that the offense does not put an emphasis on doing so. Gabbert completed just 38 percent of his throws over 15 yards during conference games. That is compared to Gabbert's overall completion percentage in 2010 of 63.4 percent. Clearly, Gabbert is not overly comfortable throwing the ball down field, and as the NFL becomes a league more focused on quarterbacks and going vertical, this could be an issue.
One of the other knocks on Gabbert is that he can start to get a little shaken when consistent pressure is applied on him. If you take a look at either of the two games he started against Nebraska, it is pretty easy to see that Gabbert is fairly anxious knowing that he is probably going to take a hit every single play.
Now that just sounds like human nature, and that's true. The problem is that NFL quarterbacks take some sort of contact on just about every passing play, so the uneasiness that Gabbert displayed occasionally under pressure could be a larger problem in the NFL than it was in college.
While Gabbert may not have had a lot of glaring weaknesses in college, the ones he does have will be amplified in the NFL, especially if he goes to a bad team without a lot of help around him.
The Verdict
5 of 5
With the first pick of the 2011 NFL draft, the Carolina Panthers should draft...Blaine Gabbert, quarterback, University of Missouri.
At the end of the day, this is really not that difficult of a decision. Gabbert has almost the exact same physical tools as Cam Newton (not quite the same arm strength, not quite the same athleticism) except with more repetitions in the passing game, a better feel for making reads, better accuracy and most importantly, none of the baggage.
Even if Cam Newton's off the field issues never affected his performance on the field, they still had a significant impact on how the public viewed him. Quarterbacks in the NFL are not just the leader of the football team; they are the face of the franchise.
There is a reason that the best quarterbacks in the league (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees) do not even have a whiff of controversy surrounding them. It is the same reason that the Steelers considered cutting Ben Roethlisberger after his latest incident. The way a quarterback represents his franchise off the field means almost as much as the way they represent the franchise on the field.
At the end of the day, Blaine Gabbert looks more like a franchise quarterback in both ability and image.
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