set his sights on the Patriots<\/a> as they try to earn a spot in the Super Bowl. <\/p>\n\u201cThe New England Patriots have had the easiest road to the Super Bowl in NFL history,\u201d Newton said on his \u201c4th&1\u201d podcast. \u201cThe first team that you played, the Los Angeles Chargers, that\u2019s a bottom-tier team. Not a team that\u2019s expected to have a deep playoff push\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then they played another team that came into Foxboro and was deficient offensively, the Houston Texans. Nico Collins, out. That wasn\u2019t the best version of that team.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He then pointed to quarterback C.J. Stroud playing the worst game of his career as a knock on the Texans talent, not a credit to the Patriots defense and game plan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Since Newton has opened the floor to comparison, let\u2019s examine his 2015 Carolina Panthers\u2019 path to meeting Peyton Manning\u2019s Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
It started with a narrow seven-point home victory over the Seattle Seahawks.<\/p>\n
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The Seahawks were majorly without star running back Marshawn Lynch. Lynch had played the entire 2015 season laboring through a hamstring strain before suffering a sports hernia in November. Lynch played in just seven games that season, totalling just six playoff carries and then retiring immediately following the loss.<\/p>\n
An argument could be made that the Seahawks team was not at full strength.<\/p>\n
Next, he played 36-year-old Carson Palmer\u2019s Arizona Cardinals, once again at home. Palmer threw four interceptions in the blowout road loss.<\/p>\n
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Sounds familiar.<\/p>\n
Not to mention that his team\u2019s playoff push began with a bye week.<\/p>\n
So in his only Super Bowl run, Newton had the home-field advantage, played a team with an injured star, and then met a quarterback who threw four interceptions.<\/p>\n
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Perhaps Newton is projecting when he calls the Patriots\u2019 path historically weak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former New England Patriots quarterback Cam Newton seems to make a living off of antagonizing the fan base…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2075],"tags":[7571,235,260,2567,7,6,236],"class_list":{"0":"post-697725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-cam-newton","9":"tag-carolina","10":"tag-carolina-panthers","11":"tag-carolinapanthers","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115941858056187067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}