Cam Newton didn't feel like he was targeted with helmet-to-helmet hits in Thursday night's game against the Denver Broncos, but his Carolina Panthers teammates disagreed.

A flag was thrown on a hit to the quarterback just once.

"Do you see them calling it?" Thomas Davis asked. "Early in the game, a guy took two, three steps and hit him in the head and they didn't call a penalty.

"We've talked about it ad nauseam. It doesn't matter. They ain't going to change it."

Greg Olsen believes officials need to start treating Newton like an NFL quarterback.

"I know he's the biggest guy on the field, but he's still the quarterback," Olsen said. "We'll see what some of those [helmet-to-helmet hits] look like. Obviously, we got one of them, but we didn't get many yards off of it."

Ron Rivera said a couple of the shots Newton took "were unfortunate," but Rivera didn't want to take a hard line on what happened until after he reviewed film.

"We'll see," he said. "We've got to look at the tapes. I don't want to pass any judgment on that."