Humbled Newton Refuses To Declare Himself The Patriots Starter.

For weeks Bill Belichick has said that he would have a quarterback competition. Bill even came out and named both Stidham and Newton co-starters before Stidham mysteriously suffered a lower body injury from lack of stretching and overuse. Which gave Newton more reps.

At Wednesday's press conference, the media tried to get Cam Newton to declare himself the starting quarterback. Newton was humble and did not fall into the media's trap.

Newton admitted there were areas where he was behind both Stidham and Hoyer. Areas the media is over looking as they try to portray their story. So when reporters questions basically insisted that Newton was the starter, Newton responded.

"Absolutely not, Every day is a workday for me. That label is not important to me right now because I know I have so much that I need to get better at, so much I need to learn, so much that I need to comfortable with. Throughout this process, that's the last thing that I'm pretty much worried about, knowing that there are certain things when I come to the line of scrimmage and it's just not as firing mentally as I would want it to be rather than other plays that may be called. 

I see a person like [Brian Hoyer] go to the line and he's just as sharp as it could be. From me asking him questions and him answering them, and [Jarrett Stidham], and things like that, there are things I know I need to become better at. Until I get those things done, everything else is irrelevant." 

So while Newton maybe getting more reps and having fun with Edelman while Stidham is limited, he knows there are things a starter should be fluent with that he is not. Belichick praised Newton for his progress, as he has been doing with all the quarterbacks this camp.

In Belichick's statement he said, "Specifically for Cam, he's worked very hard, picked things up well. Of course, Stid [Jarrett Stidham] and Brian [Hoyer] have a little more experience in the system. Cam obviously has more playing experience. So, we'll see how all that plays out, but I think we're ready to, I would say, move forward from an execution standpoint. As I said, schematically, we're far enough along here where we have plenty of football in to play a game and to play in everything but maybe a couple of the last play of the game type of situations. But other than that, we have a lot to play with. We'll just have to see how well we can perform and perform against the competitive situation on the other side of the ball with our defense and vice versa."

Now while Cam doesn't have the experience in the Patriots system, that takes time. No different then gaining game experience. Two things that can easily be acquired as the weeks go on. Which gives Newton a slight advantage because eight plus seasons of game experience is better than one year of system experience.

Newton didn't have a great day in practice on Wednesday, although it got better according to several writers. He apparently had several dropped interceptions to go with his one on the day and if not for defensive drops, he could looking at double digit interceptions at this point in camp. Something Newton will have to work on.

As far as the quarterbacks competition, Tyler Sullivan of CBS Sports wrote, "New England will open up the regular season against the Dolphins on Sept. 13 at Gillette Stadium, giving Belichick a bit more time to evaluate each of these quarterbacks. At some point soon, however, the pendulum will need to swing from a quarterback competition to getting one of those signal-callers ready for Week 1. As things stand currently, Newton appears to be the favorite to be QB1 when they officially begin the 2020 season."

Newton is the frontrunner runner and it's press conferences like today that are going to help win the respect of Patriots fans. He will still need to prove it on the football field. The Patriots take on the Chiefs and Seahawks in their first four weeks. Which Cam will have a chance to prove he's the man. For now kudos to him.