Very disingenuous, a fake smile, scripted, always knows where the cameras are and plays to them, has an enormous ego.
That’s the description of a guy who could be the Redskins’ next quarterback. So said Nolan Nawrocki, author of Pro Football Weekly’s draft book, about Auburn quarterback Cam Newton. And he didn’t stop there, questioning his maturity and football smarts.
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Nawrocki said scouts have told him Newton will fall to the Redskins at No.?10. But …
“I seriously doubt whether they would draft him,” he said.
Though Nawrocki, who played at Illinois, ignited an Internet firestorm with his evaluation — and that’s all it was — he wasn’t about to back off. He also said on a conference call that several teams’ decision makers called Newton a “fraud” and “disillusioned” about his past.
“With all the work we’ve done on his background and the extensive amount of research and time that went into figuring out what kind of kid he is, I feel strongly about what was written,” Nawrocki said.
Nawrocki is not the only one with this view of Newton. A number of evaluators, scouts or analysts have said based on what they know and have heard, they would not draft Newton in any round. Not everyone thinks this way.
“If I had to take one I would take him,” said one general manager, who did not believe Newton would fall to the Redskins. “His team wins because of him. He’s special. You could look at his inexperience as a strength or a negative. I see it as a strength. He’ll keep getting better. Do I like him as a kid? No. He’s not a good guy, very self-absorbed. But if you had to win right now, he gives you the best chance to do that.”
Last year, among the buzz words Nawrocki used to describe quarterback Jimmy Clausen: “overly staged, entitled, immature, elitist attitude.”
“The evaluation isn’t any different than what [PFW] has done for 33 years,” Nawrocki said. “[And] anybody that does their homework and really digs hard will come away with a lot of the same conclusions.”
