Throughout this NFL season, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton has been struggling with a foot injury — one he picked up in a preseason game and exacerbated in the second week of the regular season. Now, in a candid update, Newton opened up about the circumstances of his injury and announced that he wouldn’t risk further complications by returning to the field too early.
“I want to be brutally honest,” Newton said in a video post discussing his injury.
While smoking a cigar and drinking a glass of wine, Newton discussed how he’d spent the offseason dealing with the fallout from a shoulder injury. The recovery process was so all-consuming, though, that it left him eager to play again — to the extent that he discounted things when a different injury came out.
During a pregame ritual early in the season where he took in the entire field, Newton realized that he was having issues running. He describes feeling caught between not wanting to adversely affect his teammates and wanting to do the best job he could on the field — which left him torn as to what the best course of action was.
“I guess that’s what this league does — it humbles you,” he said in the video.
Newton spoke warmly about his teammates, the team’s training staff, and their coaches — and of his trust in them to both help with his recovery and to thrive in his absence.
“I was my own worst enemy,” Newton said. Though many of us are not world-renowned athletes, the sense of ignoring problems as they compound is an eminently relatable one — and Newton’s candor about his own experience is very welcome.
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