CAM NEWTON IS enjoying this NFL season in a way that makes some people proud and others lose their minds. He is nearly a caricature of happiness, smiling when we have been conditioned to expect aggression, laughing when we expect seriousness. The default response to success in a game of rage and combat is belligerence: an angry pose or a violent firing of the ball into the turf. And yet here is the rarest of men: one who can throw his body into a snarling pile of large humans -- all gunning for him with malicious intent -- and emerge on the other side with a radioactive grin and a first down.
So at this point maybe you're wondering whether there's anything that hasn'tbeen said about Cam Newton. Fair point. He's so well-known nationally that he's been charged with the unenviable task of making yogurt look cool. He is going to be the MVP over Teflon Tom Brady -- a fact cherished by some as near historical and by others as something close to chimerical. His post-touchdown dances have spawned overwrought, what-will-we-tell-the-children letters to the editor. He is -- and has been -- viewed endlessly through lenses of maturity, greed and race. So yeah, you probably have an opinion of the guy.
But then again, there's an honest-to-god foxtail hanging from the front left pocket of his pants, he named his son Chosen and he appears to have no absolutely no interest in being ordinary in anything. He stands at his postgame news conference with purple shoes one week, swirling black-and-white the next. "I don't know where he gets those shoes," says his father, Cecil Newton. "Really, I have absolutely no idea."
Derek Anderson. "I see it, but I haven't figured it out. I guess because he can?"
You could be angered by this. Your call. It wouldn't take much to perceive it as an affront to the old and phlegmy norms dictating respect and humility on the field of competition. And if you lean in that direction and aren't offended, fear not. Chances are there's another opportunity on its way.
In the second quarter against the Falcons, after an inspiring, borderline-reckless 1-on-11 run for 8 yards and a first down, Newton took a walk through the Falcons' secondary. He was in no hurry -- the officials called for a measurement, which was accompanied by the obligatory eight commercials, and Newton seemed to have a maestro's feel for the game's staccato rhythms. The message behind the walk, conscious or not: I'm going to get here soon enough, so I might as well check it out first.
These are the actions that try men's souls. "Some teams get offended when he does stuff," Anderson says. "He made a good point: If you don't want to watch me dance, do something about it. But then again, when he said that, it was another thing for people to take offense to." Anderson laughs at the absurdity of Life With Cam. It's like the Old Testament: Something is always begetting something else. There is a Panthers staffer who occasionally comes to the sideline between drives and takes off Newton's skullcap, replacing it with a towel. Cam sits on the bench, paying no attention as the guy goes about his business like a waiter refilling a glass. Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, a friend and mentor of Newton's, says, "When people get upset about the towel, I tell them, 'Relax, he's only wearing it because it says Gatorade on it.'"
Joe Webb and Anderson -- "We don't have a name for it," Anderson says -- before making his way to the bench.
Brenton Bersin, who got a first down, fought for yardage and ended up losing the ball when it was stripped by Lavonte David.
After the fumble, Bersin moved with his teammates along the sideline in the ectoplasmic horde, trying to lose himself in the humanity. Nobody acknowledged him, probably out of sympathy more than spite, until one large man grabbed him by the arm.
"Keep doing that," Newton told Bersin. "Keep being you. Keep making plays and fighting."
Bring them with you. Earlier in the game, Webb recovered a fumbled punt and returned it to the Bucs' 3-yard line. He stood up after being tackled and almost immediately found himself face to face with Newton, who was jumping up and down and running onto the field almost before Webb was tackled.
"I thought we were going to get a penalty," Webb says. "When I saw him my first thought was, 'What are you doing out here?'"
What is he doing out there? Or maybe the question should be: What isn't he doing out there? Or: What is he doing everywhere? -- standing a few steps outside the Falcons' intro line, bombing onto the field during punt coverage, strolling through the opposing secondary after a first down.
There comes a point in every Cam Newton story where the obligatory must be said, and this time it's courtesy of Panthers defensive back Cortland Finnegan: "He's a big kid out there. You can't take what he does personally. You just can't. It's who he is. You watch him and realize he's having a great time, and no game is too big for him."
It's quite different from the whispers that followed him into the league. That he sometimes sulked as the Panthers went 6-10 and 7-9 his first two seasons. That he alienated teammates by lifting weights by himself. (During his two years at Florida, he lifted with the defensive linemen.) That he put up great numbers but hadn't yet mastered the art of bringing them with him. That he was, in Whitfield's terminology, playing the position but not occupying the office.
Football players are notoriously and probably unnecessarily leery of dealing in specifics. Even the most laudatory comments are general ("He can really hit receivers in tight windows") or intentionally vague ("He's got a good feel for the game"). But when Anderson discusses Newton, it's obvious he's got to pull himself back. He wants to lay it all out; he just knows he can't. And so he discusses Newton's transformation from a quarterback who follows directions to one who gives them. "Sometimes he'll see something and I'm like, 'Damn, how did he come up with that?'" Against the Bucs, Newton told quarterbacks coach Ken Dorsey he wanted to make a slight change to the receivers' routes when faced with a certain coverage -- "It was something we hadn't worked on for weeks," Anderson says -- and within a series it was creating confusion in the Bucs' secondary on a day when Newton completed 21 of 26 passes.
"The first couple of years, when we'd come to play Cam, we knew he was a big, strong, athletic quarterback," says Panthers defensive back Cortland Finnegan, who has played with other teams in his 10-year career. "As a secondary, we'd say, 'Well, he's not very accurate; he's not comfortable in the pocket yet.' But now? To see him in person now? It's night and day. It's like -- wow!"
Robert Griffin III had a DJ playing music -- some of it sung by RG III himself -- at his Baylor pro day. Imagine for a moment if Cam Newton, fresh off his national championship/Heisman Trophy season but hounded by those associating him with a lack of desire, maturity and leadership qualities, had shown up at his pro day with a DJ. He might be playing in Canada.
"There was a heavy cloud and a lot of pressure heaped upon Cam," Cecil Newton says, his voice like a flare in the night sky. "A lot of NFL pundits were advising teams to stay away from the guy for character reasons. There was this whole attitude of him supposedly not wanting to be a leader. They said he'd get money and flop like the rest of them. I know how I'm built and how I helped build my son. I knew it was as far from the truth as you could get."
The cloud stretched across the South. Newton left Florida after an incident involving the purchase of a stolen laptop (the charges were dropped after he completed community service and a pretrial program) and rumors of academic impropriety. Before the draft, NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock cautioned against taking Newton with the No. 1 pick, saying, "It's just this gut feeling that I have that I don't know how great he wants to be." And, "Something tells me he'll be content to be a multimillionaire who's pretty good." And, "I think the kid is smart enough. I just don't know if he cares enough."
During an interview with a team psychologist of an AFC North team at the combine, Newton was asked whether he sees himself more as a cat or a dog. When he suggested that the question was not relevant and that he saw himself more as a human being, he was immediately asked whether he had a problem with authority.
"African-American quarterbacks get analyzed in ways that others don't," Moon says. "We've dispelled a lot of those myths, but not all."
As a professional, he has never appeared in a police blotter. He does an amount of charity work that even a cynic must concede is impressive. In the offseason, he fulfilled a promise he made to his mother and returned to Auburn to finish a degree in sociology. It's the kind of CV that generally revs the myth-making machine. And yet after the Panthers won at Tennessee, a Nashville mother wrote a letter to The Charlotte Observer that reached Peak What-Will-We-Tell-The-Children. Addressed directly to Newton, the letter complained about "chest puffs" and "pelvic thrusts" that were so egregious she was left with no choice but to divert her 9-year-old daughter's gaze to the Titans' cheerleaders, apparently because nothing restores purity and innocence quite like half-naked women gyrating in support of professional athletes.
"The lady writing the deal about his dancing?" Anderson says, shaking his head. "To me, that was racist. That was flat-out racist, the most close-minded thing you could say."
Does any other athlete have the power to incite such torment? Or to defuse it? Because the letter-writer, Rosemary Plorin, backtracked after Newton publicly apologized for offending her while continuing to profess allegiance to the basic tenets of having fun. "I am sorry I didn't understand him better until this week," Plorin wrote.
"Here's what people don't understand," Whitfield says. "If Cam was a bank teller, on a wall somewhere in that bank he'd be employee of the month for March, April, May -- something weird would have happened in June, and he'd be back on the wall for July. It wouldn't be about the recognition or the awards, it would be, 'I'm going to be the most outstanding person in this bank, and this bank is going to be the best bank in the neighborhood."
Buffalo Bills called. It was late afternoon, and several of the team's decision-makers wanted to have dinner with Cam.
"What do you have to wear?" Moon asked.
"I've got my dark UnderArmour sweatsuit or my gray UnderArmour sweatsuit," Cam said.
Nobody said anything, and by this point he knew what the silence in the car meant. You can't give in; you can't give them what they expect. He had to fight the campaign, and that meant being better-dressed and better-prepared and better-mannered than anyone who came before him.
"You think I should wear something different?" he asked.
"You might want to make this more formal," Moon said.
Cam had no objection.
And so the five guys drove to the mall, in a hurry. Cecil quarterbacked, jotting down sizes and assigning himself the job of finding a shirt. He told CJ to find a pair of slacks. Moon was told to look for a tie. Cam and Whitfield were in charge of shoes and socks.
Within minutes, Cecil held up a light blue shirt and CJ walked around with a pair of navy slacks and Warren got a tie and from across the men's department Cecil gave a thumbs-up to the shoes and socks.
Less than an hour later, Newton walked into the restaurant and shook hands with the Bills' decision-makers looking like he was interviewing for a job at an investment bank.
"The joy of Cam Newton: How a polarizing QB made (great) football fun"
- Thread starter KOBE
- Start date
The Warren Moon pro day stuff though.
I knew he went to play for Canada, but I didn't know they altogether refused to let him even try out to be a QB and refused him a pro day. That's some over the top racism right there.Oh and the unfair comparisons to Vince Young(who wasn't really even given a fair go) and Jamarcus was some bullshyt.
Bishop_BP_Jakes
Prophesying on your CD's and tapes
#BlackExcellence
Not giving Warren tha Gawd a pro day back in '79. NFL
Not giving Warren tha Gawd a pro day back in '79. NFL
From the 1st time I saw him at Auburn I thought there was something special about Killa
This is beautiful
That's what you want in the father/son relationship.
Warren Moon there to help bridge the gap to connect the legacies of the black QB
This is beautiful
That's what you want in the father/son relationship.
Warren Moon there to help bridge the gap to connect the legacies of the black QB
WuDatWuDat
All Star
im worried about the seahawks theyre a high caliber opponent
Win or lose it was a great season for Cammy Cam
Black Excellence survives this week no matter who wins
SEA @ +3
Beautiful... simply beautiful.
And yall aint know Moon is about that black QB shyt?
And yall aint know Moon is about that black QB shyt?
birdgang91
All Star
Crazy I just read about the Warren Moon proday yesterday in an article about black QBs/Russ/Cam I found. I'll make a thread for it because there was some deep stuff.
I also like hearing about OGs like Moon mentor Cam. McNabb actually called every black QB with advice a few yrs back with RGIII being the only one to not take his call
.
I also like hearing about OGs like Moon mentor Cam. McNabb actually called every black QB with advice a few yrs back with RGIII being the only one to not take his call
.
Crazy I just read about the Warren Moon proday yesterday in an article about black QBs/Russ/Cam I found. I'll make a thread for it because there was some deep stuff.
I also like hearing about OGs like Moon mentor Cam. McNabb actually called every black QB with advice a few yrs back with RGIII being the only one to not take his call
And you got dumb ass nikkas on here like @mrken12 suckin off that corn syrup clown
birdgang91
All Star
I'd bet anything RGIII regrets it now. I still want him to find success elsewhere just to have another black QB in the league but he and his ego was a huge part of why he failed in DC.
Not to mention every time he steps on the field he gets beat to a pulp
