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I don’t care if you love or hate Cam Newton. I don’t care if the Panthers lost the game. If you throw 422 yards in your NFL debut, crushing Peyton Manning’s previous NFL debut record of 302 yards, that’s a big freaking deal. His 422 yards passing tied the best effort ever by a rookie. That too, is a big freaking deal. Side note: check out those high tops. Those are abnormally high, high tops, no? Back to his stats… to put his passing performance in perspective…McNabb threw for 39 yards on Sunday. Oh, and the golden boy of all quarterbacks, Tom Brady… has never thrown for 422 yards. (He’s only gone over 400 yards in a game once, for 410 in 2002.) For me, as a player and a person, the jury is still out on Cam. I don’t particularly care for him one way or the other, but the dude has certainly left an impression on the NFL after only one game…and he shoved a giant sock in the collective mouths of every talking head that said he wouldn’t succeed in the NFL, even if it was only for one game. Somewhere, Jimmy Clausen lurks in the shadows and prays for another NFL start.
-bp