Talk about deja vu. For the season year in a row, fantasy football owners of Carolina Panthers QB Cam Newton are sitting here in the month of October thinking back to the drafts and saying to themselves "what have I done?" The reason for the self-flogging once again has to do with the more than shaky play of Newton through the first four games of the season, lowlighted by the 3 interception/zero TD mess in a loss to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 5. That brought Newton's totals through four games to only 6 passing touchdowns with 5 INT's and 885 yards. In addition, Newton has only 1 rushing touchdown and 123 yards altogether on the ground from the same guy who rushed for 21 and 19 scores his first two years in the league. Stating the obvious, Newton once again heads into the cold weather grossly underachieving and leaving his fantasy football owners in a bind as they get poor performance from the most important position in the make believe game. And this is the same deal we dealt with last season at this time as the Panthers and Newton got off to horrible starts, only to rally in the second half of the season to save face. In fact Newton was one of the very best fantasy football QB's over the last five games of 2012, winning back all of his admirers as he piled up the running and passing yards, with scores thrown in on both sides of the game.
So what really is going on here? Is Newton a guy who can only put up the numbers when his team is out of playoff contention and the games don't count? While it seems that way lately given what we saw in 2012 and the slow start to 2013, remember that Newton exploded out of the gates as a rookie in lighting up the league with 400-yard passing games and running all over the field. However he also clearly caught opposing defensive coordinators off guard as no one saw that kind of performance coming right away from a rookie. Thus the slow start to 2012 was those same coordinators possibly coming up with a scheme to hem Newton in. But again he was tremendous to finish the season which helped earned back the credibility he had let slip away.
Now onto 2013. The Panthers are a miserable team, their coach is a lame duck who will be fired at the end of the season, and Newton is helping the negative cause by playing horribly. There is a widespread notion around the league that defensive coordinators have won the battle against the read option offense as Colin Kaepernick and RG3 are also struggling mightily like Newton is. That is a very real possibility given what we have seen from this group. And again we can't discount Newton not being able to perform when the games count as this is now the second season in a row he has been poor early on. What we have here ultimately is a mess for Newton's fantasy football owners who have reached the point where another option is a better way to go for the next couple of weeks. While Newton is way too talented to continue struggling like this and he very well could reprise his second half renaissance when the games don't count anymore, as an owner you still need to have your own games that count in a few weeks and for now Newton is not helping you get there.
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