The Denver Broncos, who clearly had rattled Newton with 13 hits during the game (his previous season high was six), are all but saying Newton was afraid to go get the ball.
“If he would have touched that ball, I was gonna hit him right in his face, and I wasn’t the only one,” Broncos safety T.J. Ward, who recovered the fumble, said via NFL.com’s Michael Silver. “We were hungry for that one. We saw that ball and it was like hyenas on an antelope.”
And then Ward delivered the finishing move:
"And I don’t know — maybe he needed to stay healthy for next year.”
Want more? Here’s Broncos cornerback Chris Harris (again via Silver): “Cam was scared to throw it. He looked blind. He couldn’t figure out where to throw. That’s what pressure does, man.”
Or how about Denver cornerback Aqib Talib (when he wasn’t falling off the NFL Network set): “He tapped out. Yeah, he didn’t want it.”
Broncos say Cam Newton ‘tapped out’ by not diving on the fumble
