Cam has been a 60% passer three times in nine years. He had an outlier in 2018 where he completed a career high (by far) 67.9% in 14 games. That was surrounded by a subpar 52.9, 59.1 and 56.2 (in 2 games) over the last four seasons. Accuracy has never been a strong suit for Cam (career 86.1 rating when elite passers typically top 100.0). Josh McDaniels is a helluva QB coach and playcaller, but QBs rarely change their stripes when they are entering their 10th season. The NE offense started showing serious flaws last season as age started creeping up on Brady, it's hard to imagine it improving a whole lot this year with a 31 year old Cam coming off of a couple of major surgeries. Yeah, it's possible his mobility compared to the statuesque Brady opens up some more possibilities, but it's hard to imagine them subjecting a fragile Cam to as much punishment as Carolina has in the past. Then again, it is a one-year deal on the cheap, so I guess they don't have much to lose by punishing him.
I think they're probably quite a bit better off with Cam than a total unknown like Stidham, but I don't know by how much until we see how limited Newton is after a couple of significant injuries. NE is probably a playoff team with him if he's 70% of what he was at his peak, but I don't see them getting very far. They won a lot last year on the back of their defense that played lights-out over the first couple of months, but they wore down as the season went on. I don't know that their D is elite enough to make up for probable offensive shortcomings.
We've heard the "is it Brady or the Belichik/McDaniels system?" stuff for years. We'll find out how much of either it was this year. I feel it was a mix of both, and I don't think either will be nearly as successful without the other. I bet we see Brady struggle as age takes hold in Tampa and NE struggle without Brady's football savvy.
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