Cam Newton stood on Atlanta’s 33-yard line facing fourth down with four yards to go. The 6-foot 5 quarterback looked down the field and didn’t see any of his targets open – instinctively finding room and scrambling for extra yards with first down yardage in his sights. He rushed for ten yards and, having the first down, started to slide. Then, Falcons’ safety Damontae Kazee ran at top speed towards Newton and like a freight train crashing into a stalled car on the tracks, Kazee collided helmets with the Panthers quarterback as he was defenseless – the crown of the safety’s helmet connecting squarely with Newton’s chin.
Newton laid flat and was motionless for a few seconds – chaos and uncertainty ensued as a shoving match ensued, with Torrey Smith and Takkarist McKinley at the heart of it.
“I think the referees made the correct call,” said Head Coach Ron Rivera about Kazee’s ejection. “We’ve all been talked about when quarterbacks slide and take care of themselves but it was good to see the decision to throw him out, [it] was the right one. We just have to be smart and try to protect these guys careers and their health…I understand they went back to New York just to double check.”
“They agreed and that’s what happened.”
Atlanta Falcons safety Damontae Kazee was ejected for unnecessary roughness at 12:14 of the second quarter. #CARvsATL pic.twitter.com/6VV23IgZiq
— NFL Football Operations (@NFLFootballOps) September 16, 2018
But Cam Newton didn’t have much to say after the game, saying it was “self-explanatory” and he was lucky that his trip to the blue medical tent on the sidelines didn’t reveal a concussion for the former MVP.
“It was fine. It looked worse than it did,” Newton said. “I’m just lucky that nothing pretty much happened. But this game isn’t fit for cheap shots like that; but at the end of the day, I can’t blame him. He’s playing as hard as he can. I’m playing as hard as I can and that’s what this football game brings.”
Newton may have been mute about the dirty hit from Kazee but his teammates were very vocal; wideout Jarius Wright was very vociferous about the incident, calling it a disgrace.
“It did kind of get us fired up,” Wright, who had five catches for 62 yards and a score, said after the game. “You never like to see anybody come at your guys in that way. If you ask me, it was a malicious hit, intended to hurt him. I don’t know what they talk about in their locker room, it wasn’t right. It’s not right. To be an NFL player, you know he’s a quarterback – you know he’s going to slide.”
In the midst of the mayhem, Smith was called for unnecessary roughness – which ended up offsetting the prior penalty on Kazee. Wright says despite the results, Smith did the right thing.
“I definitely agree with the ejection, and I agree with what Torrey did,” Wright said. “You know, that’s our quarterback and we are going to fight at the end and we are going to protect him. If something happened to me like that, I would expect Torrey to do the same thing; if something happened to Torrey like that, I would do the same thing for him. So at the end of the day, we have to be smart about it.”
“But we do have to have each other’s back at the same time.”
This issue hits close to home for Rivera, as he was named to the coaches subcommittee of the NFL Competition Committee. The group meets about a variety of issues which includes the safety of the players – Rivera was named to the committee in 2013 and sits with other coaches such as Sean Payton and Marvin Lewis.
Torrey Smith spoke with reporters after the game and reflected on the incident, admitting that perhaps his response was not the best but at the end of the day, he said he was being a good teammate.
“Get to whoever did it. That’s probably not the most mature answer,” Smith said. “But in the heat of the moment, I’m [going to] stand up for any of my guys.”
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