Question of the day: What kind of NFL quarterback will Cam Newton make?

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Writers from around the Tribune Co. weigh in on the topic. Check back throughout the day for more responses and feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Chris Dufresne, Los Angeles Times

Just got done watching snippets of former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton’s media workout after which the world received confirmation from Trent Dilfer that sounded like a news flash out of Cairo. This just in: Newton is really good. What’s hilarious about the NFL is it prods, pokes and measures its quarterback prospects and still drafts Ryan Leaf in the top five and Tom Brady in the sixth round. The NFL gets so caught up on analysis it sometimes turns into paralysis.

Is Newton going to make it in the NFL? Um, I vote yes. I don’t need a stopwatch or combine to tell me that. I watched him play. I saw Tom Brady at Michigan and laughed when the NFL nitpicked him into Round 6. Sometimes you just need to watch a guy play. It’s true, like Alex Smith, Vince Young and Tim Tebow, Newton must adjust from the spread-style college offense to the sophisticated pro game. But Newton will adjust. He’s a beast, at 6-6 and 250 and he has an NFL arm that, unlike Tebow and Young, only needs minimal tweaking. He won’t be able to run over NFL linebackers the way he did in college, but if he learns to wisely use his running gifts, the way Steve Young and Michael Vick eventually learned to, Newton has a chance to be an NFL star. He may not be as NFL ready as Peyton Manning or Sam Bradford were, but he has a chance to be the kind of ‘bust’ that turns into a statue. All that’s left now is for ESPN analysts to confirm this story.