Written by Bill Reiter at CBSSports.com
The football game that kicked off the 2016 NFL season was exceptional. But it was the head-to-head shots Cam Newton took, and what it says about the difficult balancing act between safety and competition, that turned the night into a failure.
For the Panthers and their star quarterback.
And for a game we all love — and a money-making machine the league must find a way to protect from the very thing that makes it so compelling in the first place: that searing violence that, this time, unleashed itself on the league’s reigning MVP.
Time and again, Newton took helmet-to-helmet shots. There were certainly four, including a huge shot at the end of the game that left him down, dazed and confused. Was that illegal hit — one offset by an accompanying intentional grounding call with just 37 seconds left in a one-point game — part of the reason Denver won a 21-20 thriller?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. From then on Newton seemed off in what could have been a winning drive, but it could just as well have been the same swarmingBroncos defense that last season made them champions. And Carolina still had a chance to win. Graham Gano missed a 50-yard field goal that would have been the winner, and that was it, the Broncos swamping their home turf, celebrating at Carolina’s expense yet again.
Melded in all that excitement was another incredible performance by Newton, a night of ugly stats but quiet promise from Broncos novice and starting quarterback Trevor Siemian, and another reminder that John Elway might be as good in the front office as he was the huddle.
But it all got overshadowed by the same ugliness that, more and more often, foists itself on everyone invested in the game of football — the league, the fans, the players, the officials, you, me.
There is a new concussion protocol in place, but if I told you I understood it after watching Newton stay in that game I would be lying or delusional. As I expect almost anyone would be, the league and its officiating crew included.
Time and again, Newton took shots to his helmet that were not called. When that flag finally did fly as the game ground down to its final, crucial moments, the offsetting policy mocked the earlier moments. It was as if to say: Even when we protect you, Cam, we don’t care enough to make it matter.
And with Newton staying in as Mile High rocked and all of us held our breath and beheld the NFL at its tantalizing on-field best, it was hard not to wonder what, exactly, the point of a concussion policy is if the game’s most important player finds no protection in either the officiating or the protocol that should have pulled him.
Newton was circumspect after the game. He arrived to his postgame news conference late, and he was polite, cautious and absolutely unwilling to give the media even a modicum of ammunition to revisit Super Bowl 50 and that postgame debacle.
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