Cam Newton said on Tuesday that he did not dive after his fumble in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl because of injury concerns.
The NFL MVP says he was worried about his leg if he went after the ball in the middle of the large pileup.
“OK. I didn’t get the fumble, but we can play tit for tat,” Newton said Tuesday via the Charlotte Observer. “I’ve seen numerous quarterbacks throw interceptions and their efforts afterward … they don’t go. I don’t dive on one fumble because the way my leg was, it could have been (contorted) in a way.”
Quarterbacks are generally taught in practice not to dive after fumbles to protect themselves. If you’re trained one way but expected to act differently in a game, that would be an inconsistency and a habit that’s hard to break, though you would hope instinct and a desire to win would take over at that point.
The fumble occurred with the Panthers down 16-10 and around four minutes left in the game. Even if they had recovered, they would have had to convert a 4th-and-long and then drive the rest of the field to take the lead. Given how unproductive their offense had been especially in the second half, expecting a length-of-the-field drive would have been unreasonable.
While most can agree Newton should have given a stronger effort to jump on the loose ball (and he’s taken some vulgar criticism for not doing so), the Panthers would still have been facing a heavily uphill battle to take the lead even if they did recover it. Like Newton said, that is not the reason why they lost the game.
