National Football League

Cam Newton's return to running form adds to Cardinals' worries

Published Dec. 30, 2014 5:58 p.m. ET

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TEMPE, Ariz. -- The 2014 season has been full of trials for Carolina quarterback Cam Newton. He had ankle surgery in March to tighten ligaments, but the ankle healed more slowly than he thought it would, limiting his running ability and still causing pain in October.

He suffered bruised ribs against the Patriots in the preseason that further set back his rehabilitation. 

Then he survived a terrifying car wreck earlier this month in which he suffered two transverse process fractures in his lower back after his truck flipped on its side.

"It wasn't one of my best days," Newton said on a conference call Tuesday. "I'm just lucky to be alive. When you look at an event like that, of course, it scars you for the time being, but good thing I was all right."

Remarkably, Newton missed just one game before returning to the lineup. More remarkably, he's looked more like the dangerous, dual-threat QB in these last three games than at any point this season.

In those three games, Newton completed 49 of 77 of his passes (63.6 percent) for five touchdowns and just one interception. He also rushed 30 times for 197 yards and three more touchdowns.

Cam Newton is a running threat again, and that could pose big problems for the Cardinals' defense on Saturday when Arizona faces the Carolina Panthers in the NFC Wild Card Playoffs.

"He doesn't look like a guy who was in a car accident, that's for sure," Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said. "He's a freaky athlete. To survive that wreck and come back and play, he had to be in unbelievable condition to do that."

That wasn't the case earlier this season. Panthers coach Ron Rivera admitted that Newton's mobility wasn't as good coming off the ankle and rib injuries, and that limited what the team could do on offense.

"I think it did to a degree," Rivera said. "There are some things that we stilled called and still wanted to do, but always in the back of our mind we had to be very wary of his situation and circumstances."

With Newton closer to full health during its Week 12 bye, Carolina incorporated more read-option plays and quarterback runs to enhance the ground game while featuring play-action and movement-based concepts on passing plays. Newton (6-feet-5, 245 pounds) has rushed for 246 yards in his last four games. 

That's bad news for a Cardinals defense that has allowed five of its last six opponents to rush for more than 100 yards, and two in a row to top 200 (San Francisco had 206 on Sunday; Seattle had 267 the week before). In the past two games, the 49ers' Colin Kaepernick and the Seahawks' Russell Wilson, a pair of running quarterbacks, combined for 13 carries, 151 yards and a TD. Newton provides a similar challenge.

"He's probably one of the most athletic quarterbacks I've faced," said safety Tyrann Mathieu, who faced Newton in college when Newton was at Auburn and Mathieu was at LSU. "He doesn't have the speed of Russell and Kaepernick, but he can make the same plays as those guys, so we have to be mindful of the things he can do to us to hurt us.

"He's a big guy, so we're really going to have to rally and gang-tackle him to get him on the ground."

Arians said Newton combines Wilson's and Kaepernick's abilities, but he adds a wrinkle.

"They don't run Russell or Kaep between the tackles like a fullback," Arians said. "Cam is a big tight end running in there. When they start running speed sweeps sideways, they're also running the power downhill with the quarterback. That's a very unusual offense to run in the NFL.

"They've done it quite successfully the last month. A lot of the other things he did in college. It presents different problems when you're just dealing with options, speed sweeps or quarterback sweeps because then, all of the sudden, it's a counter play this way and a power play with a quarterback running the ball and the tight end going down a seam. There are a lot of things to get ready for in a short week."

Cardinals veteran linebacker Larry Foote admitted that Newton presents a lot of problems, with running back Jonathan Stewart (809 yards) only adding to those problems.

"It's going to be a good test for us," Foote said. "But he's still a quarterback. He just doesn't slide like the other quarterbacks."

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