Cam Newton Was Illegally Hit In The Head Yet Somehow The Penalty Was Called On Him

Cam Newton thinks he doesn’t get proper protection from NFL officials and he’s getting more and more reasons to think so.

The Carolina Panthers quarterback took a headshot while he slid to the turf near the sideline in the second quarter of Carolina’s Monday night game against Washington. Linebacker Trent Murphy dove at Newton as he slid, making helmet-to-helmet contact with the defenseless quarterback. Frustrated with the hit, Newton flipped the ball at Murphy as he got up. Officials threw a flag. Predictably, it was for the taunting. The hit, apparently, was clean.
Now give your internal reading voice a chance to do its best Ron Howard impression here: It was not clean.

That’s a pretty good look at the National Football League in 2016, where player behavior after the whistle is more important than player safety before it. Newton has taken a number of big hits this season—some legal and others much more questionable. Many point out that a smaller, more traditional quarterback would get penalties called against defenders that hit them like that.

It’s been a frustrating, injury-filled season for Cam and the Panthers. And while it’s definitely a taunting penalty, it’s getting harder to understand how officials are missing hits like this.