Actually, that made me wonder how much sh!t Cam gets from fans.
I don't live in the Boston area, but for those of you that have been to training camp or the game last night - does he get as much flak in real life as he does on this board?
Cam is going through a very weird period of his life. He was always Always ALWAYS ALWAYS!! the big man on campus. The super athlete. From the time he was the first kid picked on the playground, to when he played high school ball, to when he won the Heisman in college and became the #1 draft pick. He was the franchise QB and the man on his team day 1, even when the results weren't there. His fans supported him unequivocally. As only a team that has no long history of great players and particularly no amazingly great former QB could (Delhomme was okay, but outside of one post season run he was an average NFL starter when he was on his game). He owned that city and kept that team competitive enough, with 4 playoff appearances in his 8 or so seasons there, which is pretty damn good.
Even in his loan super bowl appearance, we again see things falling his way. He won the MVP that season, in large part because the seas parted for him. He faced incredibly weak competition, in a very weak conference, particular in 3 games where he ran up his stats, scoring 15 of his 45 total TDs. He also had players turn small plays into huge plays for him that year. more than i think usually would happen in those cases. Not to say he didn't play well that year, you don't win the MVP unless you do, but it was a arguably the weakest MVP season as far as play on the field in modern NFL history. But it fell his way.
Newton in the last few years has been in uncharted terrotitory. He's always had critics about his play, particularly in the NFL, but he's always been able to ignore them easily. Now in the last 2 years for the first time in his life, he was told he might not be wanted. That it wouldn't just work out for him. That he wasn't going to just be given the job. That he was not a teams first choice automatically.
I don't want to say that Cam hasn't worked hard. I'm sure he worked his ass off to get where he is... but a lot of guys work hard and don't dominate all the time at every level like he has for all his life. And the only time he didn't dominant (the NFL) he could brush much of it off. His teammates love him, he won an MVP and made a super bowl, he could ignore his critics and shrug off the lack of SB wins or deep playoff runs as not being related to him, after all, he was 'the man' on his team.
Imagine going from that all your life, to being picked off the crap pile, and having a rookie fans are clamoring for, not you, but him! I imagine to someone in such a position they wouldn't know how to react to that kind of thing, it would be so outside the norm of all their life experience.