It doesn't take a master's degree and a research project to know that officials are imperfect and biased against away teams (
but here's a summary of one anyway).
I'm not sure this is thrown around a lot, but I seem to remember upwards of 30% of the referees this year being new hires (that is, new to NFL but had obviously officiated in lower levels). It's no surprise, they are essentially part timers that have to memorize a huge rulebook and make gut calls about things we can criticize with slow-mo HD replays. It's not exactly a job I would want, that's for sure.
Complaining about rules is perfectly valid tho, like the catch rule which is pretty spelled out but the calling of it is inconsistent at best and near-random at worst.
newton is not doing anything by himself. his QBR ranking is like 21 out of a possible 30 QBs (and that is with his rushing contributions taken into account). he hasn't been accurate whatsoever either. the strength of the panthers is their defense (their pass defense to be specific) and their run game. newton is the posterboy with the great smile who dabs and gives little kids footballs. if you wanna talk about a QB who could challenge brady for the MVP, talk about carson palmer ffs.
QBR is a shit statistic though, both the new one and the old one (unsure which you are referring to but it doesn't really matter). PFF has Cam as the 4th most valuable QB this year, with his legs accounting for nearly half of his value. This takes into account his receivers, run game, and game situation, so it's not a bad indicator at how good he has been this year.
Still, you're probably right, #2 is Brady and #1 is Palmer himself (#3 is Roethlisberger, noteworthy because of the missed games). Still, Palmer is too old to be on muh elite quarterbacks lists said everyone ever. /s
