Panthers, Cam Newton destroy Cardinals, move on to Super Bowl

With two minutes left in the third quarter, Cam Newton was racing toward the Arizona end zone. A touchdown would put the Carolina Panthers up by 27 points in the NFC Championship and effectively slam the door on the last dying embers of the Arizona Cardinals’ season.

Newton could have run the ball in, edging around teammate Ryan Kalil’s block on either the left or the right. Instead, Newton decided the best way in was over. He leaped straight up over Kalil, flipping forward to land on his back in the end zone. Game effectively over.

Flying in Cam’s wake, the Carolina Panthers throttled the Cardinals 49-15, booking their first trip to the Super Bowl in more than a decade. The Panthers will face Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50, a generational-quarterback matchup that will launch a thousand fiery takes about what a real quarterback ought to be.

If there remain any doubters of Newton’s ability, this game—the most important of Newton’s pro career, the most important he’d played since winning a national championship at Auburn—should have satisfied them. Newton was simply exceptional, orchestrating an offense that showed no weakness on the ground or in the air, passing near or far. Newton completed 19 of 28 passes for 335 yards, throwing two touchdowns and rushing for two more. Seven receivers caught a pass from Newton, capped by Corey Brown’s 86-yard touchdown that closed the first quarter.

Two key players for Carolina’s defense, safety Roman Harper and linebacker Thomas Davis, left the game in the first half with injuries and did not return. It didn’t much matter. Carolina isolated Arizona’s scoring plays, burying each of the Cardinals’ touchdowns in teal-and-black touchdowns.

Arizona won 14 games this year, dominating on both sides of the ball, but you’d never know it by the way the Cardinals played on Sunday night. Quarterback Carson Palmer was horrendous, throwing four interceptions as part of the team’s astonishing seven turnovers. The worst: a pick-six to Luke Kuechly with five minutes remaining that put Carolina up 49-15. And even that wasn’t the last interception Palmer threw. By then, Newton had taken a seat and Derek Anderson had come in for mop-up duty, and it was all over but the pounding.

Newton is now in line for that rarest of feats: a national championship and a Super Bowl, a Heisman and an MVP. The Broncos still stand in his way, but the way the Panthers played on Sunday night, the entire AFC Pro Bowl team might be an underdog.