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Panthers Criticized For Handling Of Departure From QB Cam Newton

The Panthers have given QB Cam Newton permission to seek a trade, and while the decision to part ways "makes football sense," the organization "sure could have handled this better," according to Scott Fowler of the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER. The inevitable Newton-Panthers "divorce has been a gathering storm in the distance for months." The "thunder and lightning finally arrived in droves" yesterday, as the Panthers gave the "best quarterback in team history permission to seek a trade even as they were in the midst of negotiating a deal" with former Saints QB Teddy Bridgewater. Newton "fired back via social media, saying the team 'forced me into this' and that he had never wanted to leave." Newton becomes the third Panthers icon to have "left the team in the past two months" along with Greg Olsen, who signed with the Seahawks, and Luke Kuechly, who retired. Only "one of those three departures" -- a team-produced retirement video by Kuechly -- "went smoothly." Fowler: "Could no one from the Panthers organization get these guys on the same page?" Newton in his social media post wrote, "I never asked for it!!" Olsen replied to Newton's post with two words, "Sounds familiar." Fowler notes it is "not a good look" for new coach Matt Rhule, Owner David Tepper or GM Marty Hurney to have "both Newton and Olsen disputing the facts of their respective breakups" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 3/18).

MESSY DEPARTURE: THE ATHLETIC's Jourdan Rodrigue wrote from the Panthers' perspective, moving on was "always a binary inevitability." The team has "spent the last several months clearing out the roster, and the coaching staff, to make way for a new direction" under Tepper. Newton "seemed like the final box to check from the 'old' regime." On the way the Panthers parted ways with Newton, Rodrigue wondered, "What would've been the right way?" It "didn't feel like this was it" (THEATHLETIC.com, 3/17). WCNC-TV Sports Dir Nick Carboni tweeted, "It might have been the right football move to part ways with Cam Newton. But the #Panthers loved this soap opera. Hell they made an actual soap opera. And then they did the best player in franchise history dirty. That smell is gonna linger in the Carolinas for a long time" (TWITTER.com, 3/17). 

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