Let’s not mince words or do anything to discount the fact that Kyle Allen had a great game Sunday in his second career start.
In achieving the second-best single game quarterback rating in the history of the Carolina Panthers and the most points for the team since his last start – a Week 17 win over the New Orleans Saints in which their priority seemed to be on getting Michael Thomas to break the franchise record for most receiving yards in a season rather than beating up on Allen and the Panthers – Allen did exactly what he was supposed to do as a quarterback in this league.
Allen took advantage of a young, porous defense missing it’s best player – previous to Allen toasting the Cards for four scores, Matthew Stafford had dropped 385 yards and three touchdowns in Week 1 while Lamar Jackson threw for 272 and ran for 120 more a week later – and led his team to victory. While it’s impressive that the Panthers rolled to 413 yards, it’s the fewest the Cardinals have allowed in a game this season.
But don’t get confused – Kyle Allen is a backup quarterback and this is what a backup quarterback does – they give their starter time to get healthy when he’s injured.
And, again, don’t get confused – Cam Newton is injured.
“I’m tired of being hurt, man,” Newton said before Week 2. “I hate being hurt. I hate being hurt.”
At the time we thought he was speaking in hypotheticals – turns out he was being honest with us.
Because Newton has too often seemed like Superman throughout his career, shrugging off flipped cars that resulted in fractured vertebrae, fractured ribs and concussions, never missing more than one game for any injury before his shoulder finally shut him down at the end of last season, many feel as if he can’t be hurt, that he can’t miss games – that even this foot injury wouldn’t be able to keep him off the field. Perhaps those who made this mistake included his coaches – the ‘midfoot sprain’ suffered during Week 3 of the preseason kept Newton out of practice for over a week, but when Week 1 rolled around, Newton was back to practicing in full.
Dr. Robert Anderson, past-president of the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society and former team orthopedist for the Panthers, said in a 2013 interview that a Lisfranc injury, when the ligaments of a midfoot joints rupture and the joints become unstable and shift out of place, is often mislabeled as a midfoot sprain.
Was the ‘re-aggravation’ of Newton’s foot injury during that Thursday night game where it transitioned from foot sprain that he could play through to something that might put him out for multiple weeks?
“He was low about it. You could tell because he wants to compete so badly,” said Rivera last week. “The first time I heard anything about his foot bothering him was after the game. And that’s why I’d been so optimistic in the first two, just knowing who he is and how competitive he was.”
What do you do when Superman admits he can’t fly? That the lion can’t roar?
While some opt for surgery when dealing with a Lisfranc injury, others opt for rehab – Rivera deflected questions about surgery for his QB earlier this week.
“We see a lot of stable Lisfranc injuries that don’t require surgery,” said Anderson. “But because the ligaments are still stretched or damaged in some way, it could be 6-8 weeks before a player can come back from even a non-operative Lisfranc sprain. There’s some doctors and general managers in the league that basically think that if they get a player with a Lisfranc injury, even it is non-operative, they will go ahead and put him on the [injured reserve list].”
“The non-surgical ones, usually they’re in a boot for anywhere between 2 to 4 weeks and gradually get back into rehab. But, like I said, it could be 6 to 8 weeks before they’re ready to play again.”
Newton has been spotted in a boot multiple times in the past week.
Last week, the Panthers took their time before announcing Kyle Allen as the starter on Friday, perhaps forcing Kliff Kingsbury to waste precious moments of the week preparing for the off chance that Newton might play even though it appeared that option was never on the table with Newton not practicing. This week, rather than force Ron Rivera to walk out of a press conference in frustration while either unable or unwilling to fully answer questions that he probably knew the answers to, the team announced Monday that Allen would start and Newton would have the time to heal.
“What Cam needs right now is time and rest for his foot,” Rivera said via the team website. “We want him at 100% when he’s ready, so there’s no exact timetable for his return.”
The reason they feel comfortable giving him that time and rest, even in a season where Rivera and Hurney are clearly being evaluated for their job after a 7-9 2018 and a lot of one-year contracts expiring after this season, is because of the success Allen had on Sunday at State Farm Stadium. The backup quarterback did his job and now Newton can do his – rehab, get healthy and prepare for the next time he is ready to suit up, whenever that is.
Allen said last week that being ready to go in and play if called upon is “literally what [he] gets paid to do” as a backup quarterback – the Panthers have always felt that even a broken version of Newton gave them the best chance to win on Sundays – currently, that’s not the case with Allen proving his competency in the desert and Newton in a walking boot.
But when Newton returns to full health, Rivera has made it clear that there won’t be a quarterback controversy. Like Teddy Bridgewater starting for Drew Brees in New Orleans, guiding the ship while Brees recovers from thumb surgery, there’s no doubt about who is the franchise quarterback in Carolina.
“Yes,” said Rivera after Allen dominated Arizona on Sunday when asked if Newton would start when he was ready. “He’s our quarterback and he’s who we rely on, but, for now, we’re going to stick with Kyle and we’ll keep rolling and see how things unfold as we go forward.”
How long they’ll keep rolling with Allen will depend on how long it takes for Newton to get back to full health – he’s already been ruled out for Week 4 and when he likely misses a third game in Week 5 against Jacksonville, it will be the first time in his career that Newton has missed three consecutive games. A week later, the Panthers might be without the most famous player ever to put on their uniform as they travel to London.
Once the bye passes, the key word in Superman’s return will change from when to if.
Metropolis waits.
