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Cam Newton Says 49ers QB Brock Purdy is Just a Game Manager

Newton should try to avoid sounding so bitter.

Grant Cohn

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Cam Newton simply isn't impressed with this season's MVP candidates, particularly Brock Purdy.

Remember, Newton won the MVP in 2015. That season, he scored 45 touchdowns and led the Panthers to a 15-1 record while throwing to Greg Olsen, Ted Ginn Jr., Devin Funchess and Corey Brown. Newton absolutely carried that team. He had one of the most impressive seasons ever. So he's qualified to talk about the MVP Award, even if he's wrong.

"Brock, they're not winning because of him," Newton said recently on a podcast. "He's managing the game. Purdy, Tua Tagovailoa, Jared Goff and Dak Prescott -- these are game managers. They're not difference makers. They don't have to score every time. They just don't have to throw a pick every time, either. If we're really going to call a spade a spade, a game manager is different than a game changer."

Newton is implying that he was a game changer during his peak, and he was. He deserves credit.

But he clearly hasn't watched Purdy play much. Purdy is much, much different than Jared Goff. Those two should not be in the same category. Goff is a classic game manager who can't move or make plays on his own.

Purdy makes plays on his own every game. Just because he plays in a good system and knows how to manage games doesn't mean he can't make plays when he needs to. And he's not the runner that Newton was, but he might be a better ad-libber, which is more important.

Newton should try to avoid sounding so bitter.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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