Cam Newton

Newton has certainly made an early NFL impact and silenced the naysayers who thought he wasn't worthy of being the #1 pick in the NFL Draft.

So far in 2 games, one against the defending Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers, Newton is 52-83 for 854 yards passing. He's got 3 TDs and 4 INTs.  He's also rushed 18 times for 72 yards with 2 TDs.

He now holds the record for most passing yards ever by a quarterback in an NFL debut and most passing yards through 2 games by a rookie.  He held the most passing yards in a 2 game stretch by any quarterback for a few hours until Tom Brady, who threw for 517 yards in week 1 against the Dolphins, claimed that.

Still though, a heck of a debut.  Newton missed the Panther franchise record for passing yards by 1 yard in his debut.   In week 2 he surpassed week1 and took that record.   So in two games, Cam Newton has 2 of the top 3 passing yardage games in Carolina Panther's history.

Newton hasn't been perfect.  But he's been poised.  He forces the ball less than many quarterbacks of his experience level.  He's developed good chemistry with Steve Smith.  And very surprisingly for a mobile quarterback he doesn't have happy feet.  He buys time to keep plays alive but is looking to throw first rather than bailing out of a play too early and tucking it away.

He does throw some balls that he should throw away.  He has made a couple mistakes and gotten picked.  Charles Woodson picked him twice last week for Green Bay.  The throws weren't egregiously poor decisions, but were poor decisions against a corner of Woodson's caliber.  Those throws may have beaten an average college corner, but they're not going to beat a veteran who's heading to Canton after he retires.  So those decisions are a case of knowing what you can do at the NFL level, and against whom, and what you can't.

At any rate I don't expect that anyone expected this kind of debut.  I didn't.  He gets an A (not an A+) from me.