ESPN.com, landing page

[KSpan]

Nice.

[rico6]

Looks good, had we'd won.

poo would have been bananas.

[Black]

Accompanying article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=6959739&sportCat=nfl

[CatMan72]

Suck that Merrill Hodge

[TylerDurden]

From the article:

Afterward, Newton, wearing dress socks, a T-shirt and shorts, sat in a folding chair in front of his locker and stared straight ahead. He hadn't lost a game since Oct. 31, 2009, when his Blinn College team lost to Navarro College. Since then, nothing but W's -- until Sunday.

He sat in that chair, elbows on knees, as the rest of the Panthers dressed and made their way to the team's charter bus. Told that Newton seemed to be taking the loss hard, tight end Greg Olsen said, "I don't know why. He was a big reason why we had a chance.''

Minutes later, Olsen walked over to Newton and offered some encouraging words. Not that it mattered much. Newton isn't used to being on the wrong end of the scoreboard.

...

"He was everything that everybody didn't expect him to be,'' said Carolina's veteran wide receiver Steve Smith, who caught eight of Newton's passes for 178 yards and two touchdowns.I'll admit it: I didn't expect him to throw for more than 400 yards. Or 300 yards. Or maybe 200 yards. And I guarantee you the Cardinals didn't, either.

At least, most of them didn't.

"I played against Newton last year,'' said Cardinals rookie cornerback Patrick Peterson, whose 89-yard TD punt return midway through the fourth quarter turned out to be the game-winner. "I told you guys from the beginning that he is a great athlete and is definitely going to be one of the greats in this league.''

Newton threw for more than three times as many yards (136) as he did against Mississippi State last September. He threw for 157 more yards than he did during Auburn's BCS Championship win against Oregon in this same stadium nine months ago.

To put a nice stats ribbon on the day, think of those 422 yards this way: Tom Brady, Terry Bradshaw, Fran Tarkenton, Bart Starr -- some of the absolute greats of the game -- have never thrown for as many yards as Newton did Sunday.

He made it look spectacularly simple, which, of course, it isn't. The NFL is littered with rookie debuts in which quarterbacks needed Depends.

...

"I would have done the same thing [Cardinals defensive coordinator Ray Horton] did, I'll tell you that right now,'' Panthers head coach Ron Rivera said.

"They brought the house the whole time,'' Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis said. "He managed it well. Those are things for veteran quarterbacks to overcome.''

Newton took two shots that resulted in roughing-the-passer penalties. Arizona defensive tackle Darnell Dockett took a little extra time removing himself from Newton after a tackle. Newton tried to slap him away.

"He's had the world on his shoulders for a year now and I think he's getting used to it,'' Carolina offensive tackle Jordan Gross said. "This is a tough game. He got hit a lot. Crowd noise, but he had incredible composure out there against all odds. He was as advertised.''

...

On the Panthers' final drive, Newton completed 60 yards' worth of passes and had Carolina on the Cardinals' 11 with 1 minute, 30 seconds remaining to play. A touchdown would have tied the game.

Instead, he threw three consecutive incompletions and his fourth pass, an underneath route to running back Mike Goodson, was a yard short of a first down.

"A lot of bad throws on my part at the end,'' Newton said.

He was hard on himself. Too hard.

"Cam is very disappointed,'' Smith said. "I'm encouraged by that.''

And so he was also encouraged by Newton's play and potential, right? Smith scoffed at the suggestion.

"So 'encouraged' is selling him short,'' Smith said. "And I'm not going to sell him short.''

Nobody is going to do that. Not after Sunday's performance.

Newton didn't do what he wanted, which was make possible a Panthers' comeback. But he did something almost as important.

He made believers.

[footballisasport]

Sadly, there are almost 300 comments, many coming from those who are looking for any reason to diminish Cam's accomplishment. Anyway, I am more disappointed that the Panthers lose than I was the Giants and that's because I saw a QB and his offense team doing everything he could to help his team and a defense and secondary team ruining his coming out party.

It's clear in the end that Cam was rushing the game. It took him less time to get to the redzone than it did for him to get the elusive touchdown. I don't know who was making the decisions but that is where u saw him forcing the ball and making a few bad throws.

[TylerDurden]

I didn't read the comments, nor will I. I suspect 289 of them came from 2 posters from this board.

And if it's anything like we've read here, then I'd rather not read them and maintain my IQ.