And yet when it was Peyton, it was excused. Double standard?
“What information could he have added, what could he have said? I think it’s a little ridiculous to even interview the losers at that point.”
It’s S.O.P. for the NFL and its players. Like Hunt said, the script was easy to follow. Players take the money so they can’t pick and choose when the limelight suddenly gets dim. Take a look at Marshawn Lynch’s example. He kept to the script, in his own unique way.
“What surprised me, however, was Carolina’s play calling on first down. It seemed shockingly predictable: run up the middle. Even in the third quarter, when it hadn’t worked all game, they seemed to stick with it.”
Yep, and it is why I don’t think Ron Rivera or David Shula are very good coaches, because when you face a situation where an opponent is beating you, you change game plans. Carolina did a horrible job of that, for example, Denver was using an edge rush with Vonn Miller and Demarcus ware to get to Newton, and Carolina did nothing to try and neutralize that, no double tight end formations, no play action, they kept trying to throw the ball downfield, and it failed because there wasn’t time. Carolina has a solid O line, but no offensive line can take care of edge rushers like that,you need to adapt. It was shocking how inept their response was to the Denver D, it reminded me of the NY Giants in the 1970’s, that local sportscasters called the Prevent Offense. Then again, Rivera nearly blew a 30 point lead against Seattle by going into prevent defense, so the lack of intelligent response shouldn’t surprise me.
The loser’s press conference is an old tradition, and the idea is to promote "the drama’ of the game, how ‘devastated’ the loser is but how ‘resolute’ they are to come back, etc. What happened to Newton is something that happens often, it is a lot more fun when you are winning and beating teams, when you get your head handed to you it isn’t a lot of fun. What Newton did was feed into the (mostly unfair IMO) impression of him, because he acted like a sulking child rather than “man-ing up” and accept defeat graciously.Is it fair ? Not really, I have seen Tom Brady and Peyton manning pull tantrums as well, though the one difference is usually a Brady or Manning, if they have a bad game, will go into the press conference and take it on themselves, they will say something surly like “I sucked up the place, okay? What do you want me to say, I was horrible”, Newton kind of just sat there and then walked off, didn’t talk about anything. Not necessarily fair, but it is how this whole shtick works. The NFL, for all its modern marketing, trying to make itself look hip and cool, still in some ways has the attitudes of the 1950’s crew cut conformism.
Yes, but not necessarily an unreasonable one. Imagine two people who get into separate fender-benders, the first of whom has a history (or at least perceived history) of responsible and mature driving, the second of whom has a history (at least perceived) of doing stupid things while driving. In general, you’ll give the first person a lot more slack than the second.
I have not really followed Cam Newton that much, but what I have seen of him suggests that he has some issues with attitude and maturity. That he is treated more harshly for such a repeated problem is hardly surprising.
Interesting article on the double standard between Cam and Peyton: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/10/peyton-manning-is-a-far-bigger-prick-than-cam-newton.html
Yes, he’s immature because he’s still just a kid who has always won. Too many years of everyone telling him he’s wonderful (and he is) and giving him prizes.
I don’t think he played that bad, it’s just that everyone expects him to play great every play. He had a lot of rushing yards and some of his passes were dropped. Three days later and he’s still the story. Not bad for losing.
Au contraire, it’s not a double standard. Newton is childish while Brady, Manning AND Wilson are not. Did you see Wilson pout during the awful 2015 early season games or even at last year’s Super Bowl loss? Nope. Newton thinks he’s a show dog and not a mutt. Well, even show dogs get spanked with a rolled newspaper when they poop in the house.
Manning and Brady can both be a-holes, in their careers they both at times have acted up, and if you look at what players who have played with them have said, both of them can be less than nice to teammates, can act like a spoiled brat (Brady especially has a reputation for being something of a crybaby when the team loses, blaming refs, fellow players, etc).
The difference is that both Brady and Manning have proven themselves time and again, when Cam Newton is relatively a newcomer to the spotlight, in the sense that this is the first season where Carolina really became a focus, and he is no longer the QB of a small market town, he is now a national story, much more so than when he won the national championship in college. Hate to say it, but this is what QB’s from the moment they take a snap in the big markets, like NY and such face, just ask Mark Sanchez what it is like to be a QB in the spotlight, or Eli Manning, take a look at what they were saying about Eli until the Giants won the Superbowl…and my comment to Newton would be "Welcome to the spotlight, ain’t fame a (word rhyming with witch).
Hey, I think Manning should have shaken hands with the other players when he lost. So I don’t feel it’s a double standard for me to criticize Newton this time. The difference was that this time I heard about it. Perhaps there is a double standard in how it was reported.
Well, perhaps some of Brady’s boorish attitude can be attributed to his wife’s boorish attitude. Remember she of the famous “my husband cannot throw the effing ball and catch the effing ball at the same time” comment after a Super Bowl loss to the Giants? As JFK once famously said about brother Bobby…“can you imagine listening to that squeaky voice all day long?”
Hunt–I think that is the issue. There’s been much more handwringing over Cam than there was over Peyton, as far as I have seen.
Definitely a lot more over Cam, and I think a lot of that is in many ways Manning is “Old School”, he would fit in in the 1950’s crew cut style of the NFL, whereas back then someone like Newton would be considered a ‘hot dog’, ‘show boat’ and so forth, so yeah, they are going to be a lot more likely to overlook manning because he is a ‘pro’.Lot of people get away with that, when the Giants beat the Patriots in the superbowl, Belichick ducked shaking Coughlan’s hand, and there are plenty of players in the NFL who don’t go on the field to shake the opposing players hands. I thought it was really funny when Deion Sanders criticized Cam on one of the blah blah shows, Sanders was one of the biggest hot dogs to play the game, and he also was known for being more than a bit petulant towards the press and other players, kind of ironic.
Well dang…
Headline: “KING: Peyton Manning’s squeaky-clean image was built on lies, as detailed in explosive court documents showing ugly smear campaign against his alleged sex assault victim”
Dang, indeed. Although I must admit, it doesn’t surprise me very much.
It’s stories like this that make me reconsider my naive assumptions about Aaron Rodgers. Are we to believe any pro athletes out there are really squeaky clean?
Having known my fair share of pro athletes, I do think many of them are squeaky clean.
With that said, I think there is massive incentive to keep many players, especially white players, as publicly innocent as apple pie.
I was very young when this happened and I don’t happen to follow football all that much so it didn’t surprise me that I had never heard of it… but it does surprise me that it has been kept under wraps for so long.
Sigh…is this to be another Lance Armstrong type situation?
Don’t read the comments section if you link the article from MSN on Yardbarker. Lots of victim blaming… a lot of people who have not looked at the documents as this reporter did.
What I don’t understand is, why, if they signed a confidential agreement with the settlement, is Manning allowed to write about it in his book?
Tom Brady is squeaky clean.
Tim Tebow is squeaky clean.