Cam Newton is “just working on my accuracy”

[lightsout]

OK, seriously. I want EACH of you stating "Cam is inaccurate" to find every pass attempt in Cam's career and tally the amount of times he throws a truly inaccurate ball. I'm not talking complete vs incomplete. I'm talking passes that are inaccurate/not on target. If a defender makes a play on a ball that WOULD have been caught otherwise, is it now an inaccurate throw? If a defender is nowhere near a receiver and the ball is thrown in such a location that the receiver has to veer way off the route to go catch it, does that mean it was accurate because it was complete?

You guys want to talk numbers when we discuss Cam's throwing accuracy and I am not talking about numbers when I say he is as accurate as ANY QB in the league. Will his NUMBERS be inconsistent? Yes. Why have they been? Ted Ginn as a number 1, Mike Shula as OC, a turnstile OL, Greg Olsen being the ONLY consistent receiving option prior to CMC, Cam having to be the leading rusher and throw a perfect ball 25+ times per game just for us to be competitive in games. I could continue.

When Cam is healthy, in 25 thrown passes, 18-20 of those are going to be accurately thrown balls. Guaranteed. I promise you. Watch. Film. I have. Record EVERY game this season, and while you're watching, take note of the number of passes that were ACCURATELY thrown (not good/bad decisions. Was the throw accurate) and INACCURATELY thrown. Those 18-20 passes I mentioned may not be COMPLETED, but when you consider "intended target" and "was it thrown in such a way that the intended receiver could have/should have caught it", it was accurately thrown.

But keep to your numbers and ESPN talking points because understanding that football isn't about numbers is difficult for some.

[Perry Rich]

I thought during the '15 season that Cam had grown a lot as a QB, reading defenses, making good decisions etc. I had hopes that Cam may actually develop into a good QB. But since the '15 season, it seems that Cam may just a great athlete but a so so QB with accuracy issues... 

[Zaximus]

You have to figure in the amount of drops his receivers have.   And not even official ones, but ones that an NFL player should make.    That QB's like Brady/Brees/etc. haven't had coaches that let that happen for too often.   Cam's coaches have.    He's still not Brees/Brady/Rodgers but who is?   They are quite possibly 3 of the top 5 QB's ever.    I do think Cam is in the group after them though.

[rmoneyg35]

I hate to say this but a professional athlete should always work on his weakness. His completion % hasn’t been great his whole career. My question is why has it taken this long for him to work hard on it?

[mrknowitall]

On 8/6/2018 at 6:16 AM, Reebis21 said:

“So you want a new QB is that what you’re saying?”

Good lord...I swear it’s almost impossible these days to have a convo about Cam without people either getting insanely defensive of him or people who act like he’s the worse QB in the world.

I’m literally making a observation that out of all of Cam’s traits, his accuracy has definitely been something he has struggled with. Therefor when called out about accuracy, he’s not able to really make any excuses. If people wanna blame it on his receiving core, you are missing the point. I’m not talking about dropped passes. I’m also not saying he hasn’t made plenty of unbelievable passes in tight windows. I’m saying he still needs to work on his touch and accuracy.

Do I want a new QB? No...i can’t wait to see what he does in Norv’s offense...and I  find it hilarious that now KB (if he’s even in the league much longer) will have to deal with Josh’s Allan, whose completion percentage is trash.

I think the issue is the term “accuracy”. Saying Cam is inaacurate seems to refer to an ability. As in Cam just doesn’t have the ability to put the ball where he wants it. And as fans who watch him play every Sunday we know that take is simply untrue. 

Does he ever struggle with consistency? Sure. Does he ever have games where he can’t seem to put the ball where he wants to? Sure. But inaccurate is an inaccurate term to describe him in a general sense.  

You can’t make some of the passes he makes without being accurate. People regularly accept that Cam is a unique quarterback (and once in a generational talent), but use completion percentage as the sole qualifier to judge his accuracy. 

Completion percentage is affected by distance, drops, intentional throwaways, size of window, pressure, scheme, game situations, timing, etc. Accuracy is just one element. 

Cam doesn’t always get through his reads quickly enough, he holds the ball too long at times, I don’t know that he consistently looks off safeties, and I think we’ve all seen more than enough occasions where Cam opts to deliver the ball downfield in tight coverage instead of the open guy underneath. 

After the first five games of 2017, Cam was completing 68% of his passes. In nine of his sixteen games last season he completed more than 60% of his passes (which for whatever reason is the benchmark). Seems like inconsistency to me. Not accuracy. 

[Perry Rich]

3 hours ago, Zaximus said:

You have to figure in the amount of drops his receivers have.   And not even official ones, but ones that an NFL player should make.    That QB's like Brady/Brees/etc. haven't had coaches that let that happen for too often.   Cam's coaches have.    He's still not Brees/Brady/Rodgers but who is?   They are quite possibly 3 of the top 5 QB's ever.    I do think Cam is in the group after them though.

Completion percentage isn't the same as his accuracy... when a QB throws an accurate pass but the receiver drops all of them, then that's on the receiver, but if the QB throws a pass that the receiver has no chance to catch the pass then that's on the QB . we should change the QB passing statistics from att/comp to att/catchable... that gives you a much better picture of how a QB is throwing …. Cam throws a lot of passes that aren't catchable

[Wyank]

1 hour ago, Perry Rich said:

Completion percentage isn't the same as his accuracy... when a QB throws an accurate pass but the receiver drops all of them, then that's on the receiver, but if the QB throws a pass that the receiver has no chance to catch the pass then that's on the QB . we should change the QB passing statistics from att/comp to att/catchable... that gives you a much better picture of how a QB is throwing …. Cam throws a lot of passes that aren't catchable

That is a questionable way to do it though.  Some of these receivers make QB passes catchable that are not catchable by another WR.  Who judges when a WR bailed out a QB or who says the QB put the ball in the right place but the WR fuged up making the pass look like it was uncatchable.  Even when the ball looks way off, it could of been a timing route where the receiver was supposed to cut one way but cut the other way.  Now the pass looks like Vick just threw it but in reality it the WR pulled a KB.  How are the person evaluating the stats supposed to know the receiver pulled a KB instead of the QB pulling a Vick?  I'd rather just watch the play on the field and know Cam at QB gives us the best chance to win all day every day.  And with the Oline he has had to deal with year in year out, Cam is one of the few QB's in the league able to pull out W.  Statue QBs would be remarking how the defense beat the poo out them. 

[Perry Rich]

17 hours ago, Wyank said:

That is a questionable way to do it though.  Some of these receivers make QB passes catchable that are not catchable by another WR.  Who judges when a WR bailed out a QB or who says the QB put the ball in the right place but the WR fuged up making the pass look like it was uncatchable.  Even when the ball looks way off, it could of been a timing route where the receiver was supposed to cut one way but cut the other way.  Now the pass looks like Vick just threw it but in reality it the WR pulled a KB.  How are the person evaluating the stats supposed to know the receiver pulled a KB instead of the QB pulling a Vick?  I'd rather just watch the play on the field and know Cam at QB gives us the best chance to win all day every day.  And with the Oline he has had to deal with year in year out, Cam is one of the few QB's in the league able to pull out W.  Statue QBs would be remarking how the defense beat the poo out them. 

well if a receiver catches a ball then its catchable, granted some receivers are better than others. but in general you know if a pass is catchable or not and like you say some receivers are better than others, the QB puts the pass on target but the receivers drop it, makes the qb ratings unjustly go down whereas you list it as a catchable pass, makes his ratings go up as it should.... but you are right, Cam is the best chance we have to win

[Wyank]

34 minutes ago, Perry Rich said:

well if a receiver catches a ball then its catchable, granted some receivers are better than others.

But that really doesn't go with coming up with a stat that shows accuracy.   These highlight reel catches receivers make.  Some of them are only highlight reel catches because the QB threw an uncatchable throw but the receiver said hold my beer I got this. Tip drills caught by the offense.  Could of been a horrible throw that a DB tipped into the hands of a WR/TE/HB that wasn't even the target of the pass.   Cam has a tendency to sail his passes.  Shula had a knack of having 3 receivers all on the same side of the field running similar routes.  Maybe one of his perfect passes to Thor was actually intended for RunCMC but it just sailed little bit.  If your going to go through passes that weren't caught to give credit to the QB, you would have to go through the passes that were caught but not because the QB threw an accurate ball.  For me, that's too much trusting someone to go through who doesn't even know which part of the pass/catch process fuged up. 

i'm ok with the traditional stats showing Cam has issues instead of an adjusted judgemental stat showing me Cam has issues.

[carolina_charlie]

Cam is a subpar 58% percent passer. So even hitting the 60% mark isn't great. He will never be an accurate thrower. He wins using his athleticism. Well, except in the Super Bowl win he pussed out and didn't go for that fumble.

[mrknowitall]

53 minutes ago, carolina_charlie said:

Cam is a subpar 58% percent passer. So even hitting the 60% mark isn't great. He will never be an accurate thrower. He wins using his athleticism. Well, except in the Super Bowl win he pussed out and didn't go for that fumble.

I think this is why people come out of the woodworks to combat the idea that Cam is inaccurate. Because they use it to portray Cam as some sort of gimmick. They say: He’ll never be accurate; Once he loses his athleticism his career will be over; He’s not a student of the game; He has to use his legs because that’s the only thing he’s got going for himself.

Winning should mean more than the percentage of passes one completes. And there are a ton of guys with higher completion percentages that have been nowhere near as competitive as the Panthers with Cam. In the last 48 regular season games we’ve played, we’ve won 66.7% (which is almost 11 games a season), and we’ve been within one score in the last five minutes more than 80% of the time. Cam wins with his arm talent, cadence, ability to control the clock, his athleticism, etc. 

Of the twenty quarterbacks who have the highest career completion percentages in NFL history, only two (Steve Young and Joe Montana) were playing in the NFL before the 1998-99 season. Neither Dan Marino or Warren Moon completed 60% of their passes during their HOF careers. 

This 60% benchmark is a relatively new thing. Only been going on for like twenty years. I don’t know if that’s when teams started to transition to more quick passing offenses, but I think Cam could easily complete 64-67% of his passes if that was something he was interested in doing. 

[Chaos]

1 hour ago, carolina_charlie said:

Cam is a subpar 58% percent passer. So even hitting the 60% mark isn't great. He will never be an accurate thrower. He wins using his athleticism. Well, except in the Super Bowl win he pussed out and didn't go for that fumble.

Delete your account

[Perry Rich]

10 hours ago, Wyank said:

But that really doesn't go with coming up with a stat that shows accuracy.   These highlight reel catches receivers make.  Some of them are only highlight reel catches because the QB threw an uncatchable throw but the receiver said hold my beer I got this. Tip drills caught by the offense.  Could of been a horrible throw that a DB tipped into the hands of a WR/TE/HB that wasn't even the target of the pass.   Cam has a tendency to sail his passes.  Shula had a knack of having 3 receivers all on the same side of the field running similar routes.  Maybe one of his perfect passes to Thor was actually intended for RunCMC but it just sailed little bit.  If your going to go through passes that weren't caught to give credit to the QB, you would have to go through the passes that were caught but not because the QB threw an accurate ball.  For me, that's too much trusting someone to go through who doesn't even know which part of the pass/catch process fuged up. 

i'm ok with the traditional stats showing Cam has issues instead of an adjusted judgemental stat showing me Cam has issues.

its true, there have been catches you can say shouldn't have been caught but that's a very low percentage of catches. And no, it wouldn't be a perfect way or system to keep track  of how accurate a QB is. But in general, you can see if it was a good or bad pass. If the pass was catchable or not.

[Perry Rich]

8 hours ago, Chaos said:

Delete your account

why what he said was true. Cam is a subpar QB, always has been, although i will give him credit, he did grow a bit during the super bowl season. He did totally bust the fumble play in the bowl. you pay a man 20 million a year to help win the bowl, its not unreasonable to expect him to go after and try to recover HIS own fumble in the biggest game of his life