Cam Newton has been in the NFL for six seasons. In those six seasons, he's thrown 2,928 passes, but he also has 689 rushing attempts. 

He's never run the ball fewer than 90 times in a single year. As such, his six individual seasons rank first, second, third, sixth, 10th, and 16th on the list of most single-season rushing attempts by a quarterback over the last six seasons. He has over 200 more rushing attempts than the next-closest QB in the league (Russell Wilson) during that time. 

So, he's taken a lot of hits. All that bruising has taken its toll, and Newton had to get shoulder surgery this offseason. Now, the Panthers want to scale back his workload. 

Interestingly enough, this lines right up with what Cam himself said a few weeks ago. 

"The thing I have to realize is my job is not necessarily to always be the playmaker," Newton said. "I have to give other people opportunities to make plays. That's the hardest thing about maturation, especially for me. So having more comfort in trusting the guys around me is the biggest thing. Trust and knowing my job is giving everybody a chance and letting them do their job as well."

And just as Rivera implied, we wrote at the time that the Christian McCaffrey and Curtis Samuel picks were designed to let Cam make low-risk plays by quickly getting the ball into the hands of guys that can make something happen after the catch:

Luckily for Cam, the Panthers just added a couple versatile playmakers to diversify their offense moving forward. For most of Newton's career, the Panthers have relied on big-bodied pass-catchers (and Steve Smith, who was 5-foot-9 but played like he was 6-foot-6) and didn't necessarily have many "space" players. That changed when they drafted Christian McCaffrey and Curtis Samuel with their first two picks this year. McCaffrey is a running back that runs routes and catches passes like a wide receiver and Samuel is a wide receiver that can take the ball out of the backfield like a running back. Their presence will allow the Panthers to stretch the field horizontally while Greg Olsen, Kelvin Benjamin (if he loses weight) and the rest of the receivers stretch it vertically. 

It will be interesting to see what the Panthers offense looks like this season, because they've never had players like this before during the Newton era. If they hit the ground running, so to speak, there could simply be too much area on the field for defenses to cover. But it could take some time to get used to different kinds of play-calls and different kinds of throws, and if that happens, they could stumble out of the gate.