6 Players Who Are Tough to Trust in Week 16

Cam Newton, QB, Carolina Panthers

Cam Newton was just in a pretty outrageous car accident less than two weeks ago and suffered two transverse process fractures (the pointy things on the vertebrae of your spine), yet here he is: practicing in full with no discomfort and ready to play on Sunday. With that accident totaling Newton's car but inflicting no internal injuries on him, this guy truly might be worthy of the name "SuperCam." This sounds simplistic, but it's crazy to imagine Newton's playing football on Sunday with less than two weeks' recovery time under his belt from a potentially life-threatening accident. With Ron Rivera's starting decision likely a game-time one, be careful about expecting Cam to play.

To complicate things, his opponent on Sunday, the Cleveland Browns, has a very good passing defense. Cleveland ranks fourth in the NFL by our Adjusted Defensive Passing Net Expected Points (NEP) metric and is one of only four teams that's actually taken points off the board during opponent drop backs this season. This could be a tougher test than expected, and even though Cleveland ranks in the bottom quarter of the league in run defense, Newton's mobility may be more limited than usual this week.