“Would I take him at No. 1? Absolutely not,” Tuck said of Newton.
Speaking in a panel at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston on Friday, Tuck’s biggest concern about Newton wasn’t his attitude, but rather his playing style.
“In this league, the athletic quarterbacks don’t last long,” the two-time Pro Bowler said. “It’s the quarterbacks [like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees] that can sit in the pocket and take a picture of whatever defense we’re in and know in 0.3 seconds that a hot slant is going to be open, or in 2 seconds, with this pump fake, that safety’s gonna step up … It’s those guys that [teams] are looking for, and I don’t think Cam is that player yet.
“If he comes into the league doing what he did in college, he won’t be in this league for very long.”
When asked by a fellow panelist if he would be the one laying the hurt on Newton, Tuck smiled and said, rather simply, “Yeah.”
