New England Patriots
“I’m looking at your shield, your helmet, and it ain’t got no marks in it.”
Cam Newton isn’t backing down from his “fool’s gold” comments about the Patriots. Far from it. He’s tripling down.
While wearing a Seattle Seahawks jersey during a recent appearance on his 4th-and-1 podcast, Newton said the Patriots’ path through these playoffs hasn’t been very challenging.
“The New England Patriots have had the easiest road to the Super Bowl in NFL history. Go argue with your mama,” said Newton.
The No. 2-seeded Patriots are one win away from appearing in Super Bowl LX after a pair of victories at Gillette Stadium over the past two weeks. They dismissed the Texans and Chargers, both of whom had top-5 defenses in terms of total yards allowed during the regular-season.
Newton, a former Patriots quarterback, said the home-field advantage along with going against wounded offenses have made the Patriots’ path easy. The Chargers lost both starting tackles, Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater to season ending injury. Houston’s top receiver, Nico Collins, missed the divisional-round game with a concussion.
On Sunday, the Patriots will face the top-seeded Denver Broncos without starting quarterback Bo Nix who broke a bone in his ankle last Saturday. All of this is on top of New England having one of the weakest regular-season schedules in the league.
“Going into Foxborough alone, that’s an edge,” Newton said. “Of the teams that were in the playoffs, the Chargers were not a team to be expected to have a deep playoff push. That’s facts. Also facts is they played another team that came into Foxborough that was deficient skillfully in the Houston Texans.”
“Nico Collins out. That wasn’t the best version of that team. And then, not to add, they’re not going to see the best team that’s the No. 1 seed, being that its the Denver Broncos. You’re going up against the second-string quarterback in Jarrett Stidham. So, when I say that the Patriots have had the easiest road to the Super Bowl in league history, that’s my argument.”
The Patriots won each of their playoff matchups by at least 12 points. They haven’t faced a truly formidable test yet, Newton said.
“I’m looking at your shield, your helmet, and it ain’t got no marks in it,” Newton said. “Your sword don’t got no blood on it, really. I’m looking at the Rams’ sword, I’m looking at the Seattle Seahawks, they’ve got some real character building games going on the road and figuring it out.”
The Patriots are allowing 9.5 points per game this postseason, second to only the Seahawks. They’re also second in yards allowed at 224 per game.
They held the Justin Herbert-led Chargers offense to three points.
“Justin Herbert isn’t who we thought Justin Herbert was, and it makes it even worse… he don’t got nobody protecting him. I mean, can I get a witness? I was praying for him. I was like ‘ooh Jesus’, ‘ooh man don’t hurt him’.”
They forced Houston’s CJ Stroud to throw four interceptions in the first half last week.
But, the injuries made it hard to judge Stroud’s performance, Newton said.
“It’s hard to judge a player when you’re missing your left tackle, when you’re missing your left tackle, when you’re missing your starting receiver. Going into that game, he knew that there was going to be a lot on him to do … on one of those interceptions the guy who was supposed to block the end almost looked like he got sniped and fell down so now he’s hot when he’s not supposed to have pressure and he’s throwing the ball up for grabs. He made a bad situation worse.”
The Patriots’ defense has performed well, Newton said, but the injuries on the other side may have helped that.
“You’ve played a depleted Chargers team, a depleted Texans team,” Newton said. “You’re about to play a depleted offensively though the quarterback position Denver Broncos team.”
“It’s like, yo, somebody has to say it. I’m not the dude that’s going to be like ‘oh, bro, yeah man, they look good.’” he added. “Defensively, they look great, but through all three phases of football, I want to see great games and we haven’t seen great games come out of New England.”
Newton’s co-host asked him if he stood behind the fool’s gold comments.
“Yes, because they haven’t played everybody’s best,” Newton said.
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