On that second strip-sack, Newton was criticized for choosing not to dive to the ground for the ball while it was rolling around the ground. The argument has been that Newton somehow chose in the moment to avoid diving for the football because he had given up on the game or didn't have the heart to sell out for his team, which is absurd, lowest-common-denominator fodder.
This is the same Newton who clearly played through injuries behind a porous offensive line last year for a Panthers team that was falling rapidly out of playoff contention, the one who rushed back from a car accident to suit up for a 5-8-1 team. The one who screwed up his Florida career so badly that he had to transfer to a junior college before working his way back into becoming the first overall pick. Does anybody really think that a veteran team with Thomas Davis -- who suited up with an arm that looked like a football yesterday -- would get behind a quarterback and treat him like an unquestioned leader if he was a fraud? The idea that Newton is soft or unable to overcome adversity is unsupported by his entire career up to that one play.
Why didn't Newton dive for the football, then? It's hard to say. Football's a fast game, and fumbles aren't exactly the easiest things to recover. Maybe he got caught thinking the ball was about to move as DeMarcus Ware dove toward it. That's exactly what happened, which would have rendered a Newton dive worthless, but that's been lost in the discussion. Maybe he froze, in the same way that Bill Belichick might have frozen when he didn't call a timeout before the Malcolm Butler interception in last year's Super Bowl. Maybe Newton was injured and couldn't move the way he wanted to. There's no obvious explanation, but that doesn't justify pushing some lack of intestinal fortitude to the top of the excuse pile because it fits a pithy storyline. It's far more likely to be a football mistake than a sign of emotional weakness.