Broken
Brownlow Medallist
Bill Barnwell had a pretty balanced take on that play - and Newtons demeanour afterwardsThere is actually better angles of the fumble on the internet. He was never regathering it but he should have done better.
Why didn't Newton dive for the football, then? It's hard to say. Football's a fast game, and fumbles aren't exactly the easiest things to recover. Maybe he got caught thinking the ball was about to move as DeMarcus Ware dove toward it. That's exactly what happened, which would have rendered a Newton dive worthless, but that's been lost in the discussion. Maybe he froze, in the same way that Bill Belichick might have frozen when he didn't call a timeout before the Malcolm Butler interception in last year's Super Bowl. Maybe Newton was injured and couldn't move the way he wanted to. There's no obvious explanation, but that doesn't justify pushing some lack of intestinal fortitude to the top of the excuse pile because it fits a pithy storyline. It's far more likely to be a football mistake than a sign of emotional weakness.
It didn't help when Newton basically sulked his way through his postgame news conference, giving curt answers to several questions before walking out. It's reasonable to criticize Newton for acting grouchy and not taking the game stoically because that has become the ideal, but it's also a case of perpetually moving the goalposts. How would people have reacted if the famously happy-go-lucky Newton showed up to the news conference smiling and suggesting that the Panthers would come back and return to the Super Bowl next year?