"I don’t know what you want me to say, I’m sorry." - A dejected Cam Newton walks off the podium abruptly. #SB50— NFL (@NFL) February 8, 2016
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We all know when we play a sport, no matter how intense or competitive, that there are two possible outcomes: the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
On Sunday, in the golden anniversary of the biggest sporting
event of the year, newly-crowned NFL MVP Cam Newton fully experienced the agony
of defeat. His Carolina Panthers hung
tough, but were outplayed and lost Super Bowl 50 by a score of 24-10 to the
Denver Broncos. But this article isn’t
about the game, the wonderful defensive line play of Denver, or even what
possibly was the Sherriff’s last ride. It
isn’t about all that Budweiser that Von Miller is going to have to buy Peyton
Manning. This is about how the face of a
franchise, some might say the new face of the NFL, handled the most
heartbreaking moment of his young career.
Before we get to that, I think we should hear from another
loser, the man who threw what has to be the most confusing pass in Super Bowl
history in last year’s big game – Russell Wilson. This is just a snippet of his comments
immediately following what had to be the most heartbreaking moment of HIS young
career:
In just a few minutes Wilson checks all the boxes that
someone could possibly want him to in this scenario. He shows respect to the winners. He’s straightforward. He’s courteous in responding to the media’s
questions (90% of which were about just one play). However, there’s more than just putting on a
good face to represent corporate well. Wilson says that he wants to see the most heartbreaking moment of his
career again because he wants to know what went wrong. More importantly, he wants to see where HE
went wrong because he fully blames himself for the loss. The best part about Wilson’s response is
that its genuine. We know he cried. We
know he wants to puke (maybe he already did). We know the mental anguish he must be going through. But at the end of the day, Russell Wilson
showed the competitive fire and accountability that lets you know this won’t be
his last trip to the big game; he showed what it means to be “the man”.
I won’t break down Cam’s postgame comments – everyone else
will do that plenty in the coming days. Instead,
I will say more generally that last night Cam Newton wasn’t “the man”. While his comments may have been just as
genuine as Wilson’s, Cam’s comments were genuinely poor-spirited.
Where was the fire that we saw all year? In the biggest loss of his season, Cam
deflected the same attention that he craved all year long while he was
winning. While his brothers (Thomas
Davis, Luke Kuechly, Jonathan Stewart, etc.) stood together in defeat as they
stood together all season in victory, Cam did all he could to disassociate
himself from the loss.
Where was the accountability? This game’s result was in no way on him – his
protection was atrocious – but a leader, an MVP takes the blame because he is
supposed to have the shoulders strong enough to carry that burden for his
teammates/family/fans that have been crushed. If you’re going to be the face of the franchise or better yet the face
of the NFL, you need to show out in these moments and be the inspiration people
expect you to be.
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| Despite all the heat that he’ll catch, Cam will be back at it next year and will likely be right back in the thick of things next postseason. |
Despite all the heat that he’ll catch, Cam will be back at
it next year and will likely be right back in the thick of things next
postseason. And I am in no way a Cam
Newton hater – my black and blue #1 jersey is hanging in the closet right
now. But we have to hope that this man,
who truly touched a nation and has such a platform to be the inspiration he
says he can be, takes a lesson in losing from Russell Wilson, his teammates,
and countless others; because a true leader accepts both parts of the game: the
thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
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