Jeff Garcia Says Cam Newton Should Spend More Time In His Playbook And Less On His Wardrobe

I'm not here to make excuses for Cam Newton. Cam's been hot dogshit in an August afternoon Sun since he was reactivated from the COVID-19 Reserve List. The entire world is itching to get its takes off about Cam and Bill Belichick, I figured tomorrow was going to be a long day of the Take Olympics with each and every talking head trying to one up one another until Monday Night Football kicked off. But it appears Jeff Garcia beat everyone to the punch. Hard to imagine anyone even shows up to work tomorrow in the sports talk industry after this because there's no topping this take bonanza. 

I've rewatched it a few times to make sure I understand Jeff completely. He wants Cam to instruct the equipment managers to sneak him in and out of the field so that no one sees him enter the stadium. For starters, it would appear Jeff has not brushed up on his history of Patriots quarterbacks and secret meetings with our equipment managers. Goodell would take every first round pick until my children were dead if Cam held such a meeting. He also wants Cam to not speak? So when a player is playing poorly Jeff thinks it's better for the STARTING QUARTERBACK to hide and dodge every question until he starts playing better? That sounds like tremendous leadership and definitely not front-running. I imagine the Boston sports market would respond well to that. I always wondered why Terrell Owens hated this guy, he seemed relatively harmless from afar. After this rant? I'm starting to see T.O.'s point. 

But what bothers me most above all about this is that it's just genuinely terrible analysis. You were a QB in the NFL for a decade and the best you can come up with is Cam dresses weird? That's the only reason he's playing poorly? I listened to Cam's postgame press conference. Cam said he's pressing. He's rushing everything. He didn't make any excuses for playing like dogshit. He didn't make up some imaginary injury or blame his teammates. He was audibly embarrassed when he was asked about a specific interception and it took him a minute to remember which one he was asked about because he threw so many. That doesn't make these last two weeks feel any better if you're a Patriots fan, but for Garcia to have all this supposed knowledge about the sport and position and his only critique being how Cam dresses? Zero professional insight whatsoever other than, "Dude wears hats sometimes and I don't like it." Sick. Again, T.O. has never lied to me before. 

I don't know. There's something about mediocre, bald quarterbacks from the early-2000s yelling about Patriots QBs after embarrassing October losses that makes me feel slightly better after such a miserable game. I don't expect the same finish to this story, mostly because I'm not a fucking lunatic, but if Garcia was angling for his Trent Dilfer moment then he certainly got it.