CHARLOTTE, NC – NOVEMBER 13: Cam Newton #1 of the Carolina Panthers reacts after scoring a 1st quarter touchdown against the Kansas City Chiefs during their game at Bank of America Stadium on November 13, 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
If Cam Newton somehow doesn’t get a starting job in 2020, Kansas City should be his next stop.
Let’s just get this out of the way from the jump: Cam Newton is a starting quarterback.
He should not be relegated to a backup role, nor should he be prioritized lower than the Kirk Cousins and Derek Carr’s of the world. An almost-healthy Cam Newton is better than half the quarterbacks in the league, and Cam at full-strength can lead a team to a Super Bowl.
It doesn’t appear the NFL feels the same way, which is deeply disappointing.
Newton has put out feelers this offseason but is willing to sit out until training camp or longer to see what the landscape looks like. It’s a smart move, as we’re less than four years removed from the Minnesota Vikings trading a first-round pick for Sam Bradford following Teddy Bridgewater’s horrific leg injury.
Banking on a situation where a team is in sudden need of a starter is risky, especially in an offseason complicated by a global pandemic. The literal forces of nature working against Cam suggest that he won’t find the starting job he seeks in 2020, but there’s a next-best option that could wildly alter his market value in 2021.
Cam Newton should sign with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2021.
If Newton can’t land a starting job, he should find a way to get into the Kansas City quarterback room.
The Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, so there’s absolutely no chance outside of something terrible happening that Newton would come close to starting. That wouldn’t be to point of signing with Kansas City, however.
If Newton is resigned to sitting out the year to get healthy and reevaluate his options in 2021, why not spend that time sitting with Mahomes and Andy Ried and absorbing everything that offense has to offer? We’ve seen Doug Pederson and Matt Nagy both landed head coaching jobs because of what they learned in Kansas City and the hope that they could port that over to the franchises hiring them.
Why can’t that apply to a quarterback?
In a copycat obsessed league, having the endorsement of both Reid and Mahomes is like winning the lottery twice. For Newton, it’d be like winning it three times over because he’s already a top talent in the NFL. Newton adding what Mahomes and Reid have to offer to his already Hall of Fame level talents in what amounts to a one-season detour is almost unfair.
There’s a key difference in comparing this plan to what Jameis Winston is doing in New Orleans. Newton doesn’t need to get better, he needs to get healthy. The Chiefs medical staff is less than a year removed from both minimizing the damage of Mahomes dislocating his knee and getting him healthy enough to return without fear of reinjuring it.
Newton getting top-notch medical assistance for a year is the primary reason for going to Kansas City, with the added benefit of also becoming an even better top-tier quarterback just by being in the room.
For the Chiefs, the upside is just as embarrassingly lucrative. Imagine having Mahomes, who is already a league and Super Bowl MVP, picking the brain of Newton on a weekly basis. How competitive are those practices and how does that translate not only to Mahomes’ output on the field but to the overall energy of an already bustling Chiefs locker room?
And God forbid something like last season happens against to Mahomes but he isn’t able to fully bounce back? Kansas City would be swapping Cam Newton into Andy Reid’s offense. It’s shades of Nick Foles and the Eagles, but with a guy who went to a Super Bowl as a starter not a backup.
There’s absolutely no downside to Newton joining the Chiefs. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen, but in a year where football is already going to be weird anyway, why not go full tilt and completely break things?