Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Cam originated the "**** it, Tyreek's down there somewhere" meme...
Dude was hucking deep ball to Steve Smith left, right and center. He wasn't much of a pure passer, but he had no fear and was willing to just launch it and let Smith go get it.
He didn't really do a lot of 'quarterbacking' in a 'read the defense and run a calculus' sort of thing. Frankly he NEVER really developed that skill set. But he embraced a gamblers mentality and played with his hair on fire.
Ultimately for his career he was a sub-60% passer with a pretty pedestrian Adjusted Y/A so he wasn't making up for low precision through an avalanche of downfield connections. He was Eli Manning with the ability to to run the football. That's valuable, but it's not what I would call a great pure passer.
But he was who you would ultimately hope Jackson could become. A guy who was never a truly good passer but who could threaten all parts of the field. And with his ability to do to that AND run the football, he makes defenses account for a lot.
Jackson simply doesn't threaten enough of the field as a passer. Even if he's a little more precise on the short stuff than Newton is, he's not a credible threat to challenge too many parts of the field so I think his ceiling is lower than Newtons in terms of team success.
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It's not like he was out there chucking up 50/50 prayer balls every other snap. If he was we'd have seen him throw a lot more picks than he did. He seemed to understand when and where to be aggressive. Kind of reminds me of a less refined Ben Roethlisberger, actually, which makes sense because their career INT% is actually very similar: 2.6 for Roethlisberger and 2.7 for Newton. Stafford is at 2.4, Eli's at 3, Philip Rivers 2.6. Brett Favre is at 3.3 and he was a ****ing dog back in the 90s.
Plus I like the fact that Newton seemed to elevate his receiver's game. Steve Smith hadn't had a thousand yard season in years prior to Cam's arrival. His first year in Carolina propelled Steve back into that near-elite category. Greg Olsen was just doing OK and pretty much immediately he became a premier TE. The Panthers just never really surrounded him with great receiving talent. When Kelvin Benjamin, Ted Ginn and Devin Funchess are the best of the scrubs you've been throwing to, it's gotta be tough to settle in and become a truly great passer.