Based on comments from New England coach Bill Belichick on Wednesday, it sounds like the time has come for the Patriots to decide on their starting lineup. But the alleged top candidate, Cam Newton, said it was not him. At least not yet.
Preparing for his first season with New England, the former NFL MVP was asked during a press conference on Wednesday if he thought the starting job was his since he started getting more and more work with the first team offense when training camp progress.
“Absolutely not,” Newton replied. “Every day is a working day for me. That label is not important to me right now because I know I have so much to get better at, so much that I need to learn, so much that I need to be comfortable with, and through this process, that’s the last thing I do. make me pretty worried about it, knowing that there are certain things when I get to the line of scrimmage and it just does not fire as mentally as I would like it to instead of other plays that are mentioned.
“And I see a person like Hoyster go to the line, and he’s just as sharp as he can be. There’s things I know I need to get better at, and until I get those things done. , everything else is irrelevant. “
Hoyster is 11-year-old NFL veteran Brian Hoyer, one of the players nominated by the Patriots coaches to compete for the starting QB job, along with Auburn alumni Newton and Jarrett Stidham, who last season as backup of Tom Brady served as rookie.
Brady’s departure for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in free agency in March after 20 seasons in New England is what left the vacancy below center that the Patriots are trying to fill for their season-opening game on Sept. 13 against the Miami Dolphins.
Belichick said the team had gone through the installation phase of training camp and could continue to determine its lineup for the season through training performances with 18 days until the first game.
“I think we’ll get to the point now with all the quarterbacks where there’s not a lot of new installation going in,” Belichick said. “It really is a repetition of the things they have done, and now is really the time to evaluate how well they are performing. They know what to do, they have seen different appearances, they have worked with the different receiver, tight ends, running back, even the offensive line relative to cadence and things like that, so I think everyone has a much better feeling than them did of course a week ago, a week-and-a-half ago, that I think we are all now getting to the point where the players at all positions know what to do, they know how to do it, they know who they work with, they know their teammates and we’ll see how the league unfolds in each position. ”
CAM NEWTON’S CONTINUES, JARRETT STIDHAM’S INJURY BEGINS PATRIOTS ‘QB COMPETITION
The Patriots have won their division title for 11 consecutive seasons, and Newton is starting to see why the players are helping him get extra work in practice.
“I think the thing about this particular group is so fascinating as long as you keep pushing, they will keep accelerating,” Newton said. “Although we’re a little low on the depth map for other positions, but that does not negate the willingness to get better beyond what they would do, meaning with (wide receiver) Mohamed (Sanu) and Jules (Edelman) and Doughboy – It sorry, N’Keal (Harry) – everyone just has this mentality that we have reps that we can kind of steal through special teams or whatever, we’re all ready to do that ….
“And I just want to do my part in knowing that it was not good enough in previous exercises, that we had to make it good enough.”
Newton had to play catch-up because he did not join the Patriots until they had completed their online offseason program. Newton has been the Carolina Panthers’ starting quarterback since joining the NFL as the first pick in the 2011 draft. But Carolina released him in March after playing only two games in 2019 due to a foot injury.
“He worked very hard, picked things up well,” Belichick said of Newton. “Obviously Stid and Brian have a little more experience in the system. Cam obviously has more gaming experience, so we’ll see how that all plays out.
“But I think we are ready, I would say, to move forward from a standpoint of execution. Like I said, schematically, we are far enough along here where we have a lot of football to play a game and in everything to play, but maybe some of the last situations of the game.But otherwise we have a lot to play with.We’ll just have to see how well we can perform and perform against the competitive situation at the other side of the ball with our defense and vice versa. “
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ AMarkG1.
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