Kevin Glenn vs. Cam Newton: passion vs. dollars

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/02/2016 (3537 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kevin Glenn went hell bent after a fumble in the 2007 Eastern Final for approximately 12.7 million dollars fewer than what Cam Newton was being paid to go after a loose football in Super Bowl 50.

With full credit to “The New Rouge Radio,” for tweeting out this parallel and similarity on Super Bowl Sunday, that moment may not only stick with Newton for years to come, but it’s also a snippet of game tape that reveals a key difference in the motivations of many players in the CFL and NFL.

One is played for few reasons outside of the adoration and thrill of the sport, and the other occasionally appears to be played for the purposes of securing the next three generations of your family.

In case you missed one of the defining plays of Super Bowl 50, with the Panthers down by only one score, and around three minutes left in the game, Von Miller caused his second fumble of the contest by swatting the football out of Cam Newton’s throwing hand. Amidst the chaos and mad scramble of a loose football on the turf, Newton had the best opportunity of anyone to reclaim possession and give his team a chance to stay in the game. After approaching the ball and beginning to crouch down to secure it, for some reason he changed his mind, stood back up, and backed away from the football. The Broncos recovered the ball deep within Panther territory, and the rest is Super Bowl history.

Since Cam Newton wouldn’t address his actions after the game, we can only speculate as to what he was thinking, and to say social media was not pleased with his actions is like saying Von Miller is slightly above average at rushing the edge. In my estimation, the best conclusion that was reached was the near consensus opinion that Newton made a business decision to not go after that football. Newton signed a five-year deal worth US$103 million in 2015, with a signing bonus of just over US$22 million dollars, and a cap hit of US$13 million dollars this season. By all accounts, by changing his mind about entering the fray and risking life and limb to recover that football, he looked like a player that made a quick cost/benefit analysis of the situation, and the benefit — of potentially staying within a score of the Super Bowl — fell short of the potential cost of what can happen to anybody — and their career — at the bottom of a frantic football scrum.

One play can never truly define a player, and if you’ve spent any amount of time in professional football, there are moments we all wish we could have back. For the most part, Newton is a more physical pivot than any of his brethren in the NFL. He is called to tote the football more often and into more dangerous places than most anybody else that plays the position. Granted he is also larger than most every other QB in the NFL save for Ben Roethlisberger, but he usually plays with a degree of reckless abandonment and self endangerment that separates him at a position where it is common place to avoid the rough and tumble.

In addition, at that point, Newton had been brutalized in Super Bowl 50 far worse than at any other point in his career. His offensive line let him down, his offensive co-ordinator and game plan failed him, and his receivers weren’t exactly covering themselves in glory by bringing down everything within their catch radius. He looked defeated, and his body language vouched for this assessment. Newton looked like a corporation that had a risk-management specialist enter the situation, and deem it too risky a scenario to jeopardize his future earnings.

Rewind the game tape to almost a decade ago, and Kevin Glenn, on the other end of the field, and deep in the red zone of the Toronto Argonauts, early in the fourth quarter, had the ball hit the turf after a miscommunication with running back Charles Roberts. Glenn, who was probably making just north of three hundred thousand dollars that year, and who was never going to be remembered for his physicality as a pivot like Newton, went after that ball like the lifeblood of his football team depended on it.

Glenn broke his arm in the process and missed capping off the best year of his career with a potential Grey Cup in Toronto. Cam Newton will never know what may have transpired had he given his team an additional opportunity to get back into the championship game.

Single moments never define a career or who a football player really is, but sometimes they give us a glimpse into what other considerations are being weighed at critical instances in different leagues.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97