Former NFL star quarterback Cam Newton knows his take isn’t popular, but said it anyway. 

Stephen A. Smith asked Newton if he would trade his 2015 NFL MVP award for a Super Bowl win during ESPN’s "First Take" on Thursday.

"No," Newton promptly responded.

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"Really? Wow," Smith said, surprised by Newton’s response. 

Newton posed a question to help explain his unexpected answer.

"Because you have to ask it through this lens. That was a very journalistic viewpoint/vantage point, response Stephen A. I’ll ask you this question, and just to pose this thought: what’s more important, impact or championships?" Newton said. 

"You look at a guy like Allen Iverson, ‘You stood up on the table and rararara,’ everybody is not going to be Michael Jordan, everybody is not going to be Patrick Mahomes, everybody is not going to be those individuals who have the luxury of saying, ‘Hey, I not only dominated this sport, but I also have championships to back it.’"

Newton won the MVP award in 2015 when he led the Carolina Panthers to a 15-1 regular season record and went all the way to the Super Bowl before losing to the Denver Broncos 24-10.

To further support his argument, Newton then began to cite quarterbacks who weren’t MVP-caliber players but won the Super Bowl.

"Like, let me remind you, Brad Johnson won a Super Bowl, Trent Dilfer won a Super Bowl, respectfully, Nick Foles won a Super Bowl. So, yes, when you look at those guys, and you say what’s more important, would you have preferred to win a Super Bowl?" Newton said. 

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"I think that that’s the humble approach, but if we’re being honest, the impact of you holding yourself accountable is to say everybody has a responsibility to do. And you can say as an MVP award winner or an All-American, you’ve held yourself or you’ve held your end of the bargain down."

For Newton, he said he would prefer the MVP award to the Super Bowl because it told him that he did his job. 

"And that’s what it really comes down to for me, I know that’s not the popular pick, I’m not trying to be popularized. But my take is, I’m taking individual success because I did my job. Football is not about one guy trying to do 11 jobs, it’s 11 guys doing one job and if everybody does their job best, famous words of our coach Belichick: ‘Just do your job.’"

If the Panthers had won Super Bowl L against the Broncos, Newton would have joined an exclusive list of quarterbacks to win both the MVP and the Super Bowl in the same season. 

For Newton, he would prefer to keep the MVP instead of winning the Super Bowl.

Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are playing in Super Bowl LIX, but neither of them is up for the MVP award this season. 

In 2022, however, Mahomes won the MVP and the Super Bowl, while Hurts was the runner-up in the MVP race and lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs. 

The Chiefs will take on the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX at 6:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 9 on FOX.

FOX’s coverage of Super Bowl LIX will begin at 1 p.m. ET. Coverage can also be streamed live on Tubi for the first time ever.

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