Fantasy Football Rankings Week 6: Why Cam Newton Will Outperform Tom Brady

Cam Newton is an emerging star. That's pretty clear to anyone who's seen as much as one episode of SportsCenter since the beginning of the NFL season, if that.

As great as he's been, he's still not on Tom Brady's level. That's rather obvious when you look at his on field value, but the same is even true when you compare their fantasy values.

But if both were available to me this week, I would insert the Carolina QB into my lineup and leave the future Hall of Famer on my bench.

The Patriots started the season rather impressively. They won the first two games and even looked extremely impressive offensively in a Week 3 loss to the Bills.

The last two games have also been impressive, but not in the same way.

In their first three games, the Patriots were one dimensional. Now, when that one dimension includes Tom Brady and his wealth of receiving options, you are still in pretty good position to win a lot more than you lose.

But over the last two weeks, the Patriots have taken the ball out of Brady's hands. Sure, he still gets his numbers, but they ran it a lot more in the red zone than they have in previous weeks. Actually they are running a lot more to get to the red zone than they had been doing.

The Panthers on the other hand need Cam Newton to have big games. They have no chance against the Falcons if Cam Newton doesn't throw for at least 300 yards and a couple of touchdowns.

Yes that likely means that he'll throw an interception or two, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where the Panthers just shut the passing game down.

The Panthers need a huge statistical game from Newton to be competitive. The Patriots don't need that from Brady.

Now, I expect the Panthers to lose and the Patriots to win. But if you're asking me which quarterback will have the better fantasy game, I'll take Newton.