Like a lot of people I’m pretty worried Cam might be totally broken now.

The days of Super Cam are long past us but I didn’t expect him to look this off. Last year it made some sense. He hurt his shoulder and instead of sitting the rest of the season out to recover, he stayed in and tried to force things on a season that was already quickly going downhill by December. Also even-year Panthers are cursed.

I figured the Panthers would come out in this odd year and compete for the playoffs once more. Cam had a year to heal up. The Bucs are rebuilding and the Falcons are downsliding. The Saints would be good, but this was an easy wildcard situation. This team is still reasonably stacked. But for two games now Cam has just not looked all that good. Week 1 was the White Guy Runnerman show, Cam just spent most of the game feeding McCaffrey and hoping for the best. His throwing motion looks weird, and he doesn’t look accurate.

Most tellingly, he looks scared to run. The dude has spent a career using his body as a weapon and he might finally be afraid of continuing to do so. The Panthers had 4th and inches at the end of the Bucs game. That’s a gimme for old Cam. That’s an automatic success for old Cam. Even if they knew it was coming, Cam would almost always get that half-yard. But they called a wildcat play and sent McCaffrey off to the side, unblocked, to the short side of the field. Just terrible. Blame Norv Turner for the awful playcall for sure but it really the fact that McCaffrey sweeping off to the side was even on the menu there is astounding and Cam was fine with it. Old Cam would have punched it, then screamed a primal roar, and dabbed. It would have ruled. Instead the Panthers are 0-2 and look like they won’t even be saved by even-year bullshit.

I hope this isn’t the end of fun Cam. Fun Cam is one of the best shows in the league. But with his playstyle this sort of dramatic plummet did feel inevitable. Get healthy, Cam.