It's THE Cam Newton

[Townhallsavoy]

AT LONG LAST, Cam Newton has dropped the scowl and the towel in favor of a barber's cape and an actual, honest-to-goodness smile. On a Tuesday afternoon in late November, the Panthers' record-breaking rookie quarterback is inside Bank of America Stadium getting a quick trim from his personal barber -- provided, of course, he can sit still long enough. Looking childlike, his arms hidden under the old-school cape, dwarfing the tiny plastic chair, Newton fills the room with his suddenly booming personality. After hiding beneath a Gatorade towel for the better part of five months, today Newton has decided he's ready to formally reintroduce himself to the world.

Over the buzz of the clippers, Newton begins with a series of rapid-fire takes. He starts with bad haircuts, Michael Jackson's death, college kids stealing his Superman pose and his penchant for giving out instant nicknames that sound like cheesy superhero monikers: Center Ryan Kalil is the Father; offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski is Mr. Big Chunk. And the guy with the notepad standing off to the side? He is now, and forever, the Reporter.

On a roll, Newton moves on to collard greens, the sad state of his wardrobe, Batman, the proper marshmallow-to-milk ratio for Lucky Charms and, finally, Drake's new album. Newton considers it a masterpiece of R&B and Southern hip-hop and has listened to the CD so often, he already has Rihanna's verses from the title track, "Take Care," memorized. Right on cue, Newton sticks his chin in the air, closes his eyes and begins to croon, "I know you beeeeen huuurrrtttt."

Considering what he went through before Carolina selected him No. 1 overall in April's draft, it's easy to see why Newton relates to these lyrics. Nolan Nawrocki of Pro Football Weekly denounced him, without ever meeting him, as "very disingenuous -- has a fake smile ... and a selfish, me-first makeup." Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw told his fellow Fox NFL Sunday analysts that he preferred every other quarterback taken in the first round over Newton. ESPN's draft analyst, Mel Kiper, warned teams that, similar to Newton, "Akili Smith was a one-year wonder out of Oregon. Look what happened with him with the Cincinnati Bengals." Sure, the whole media-did-me-wrong story line is perhaps the most tired subplot in all of sports, but, "I was truly scarred by the things I heard before the draft," Newton says. "Now I feel like I'm ready to come out of my shell. I know I have the talent to change this game, and I don't see no ceiling. So I'm not knocking on the door, like tap-tap-tap. I'm gonna kick that door in, like SWAT."


Since 1998, ESPN The Magazine has been recognizing athletes poised for greatness. And if the NEXT concept ever needed a lyrical manifesto, Cam Newton just provided it. NEXT is about change and transcendence, youth and hope, winning and losing. It's about embracing the unstoppable force of the future and forcing the rest of us to reimagine the perceived limits of sports with one well-placed cleat.

Which is why, in 2012, Cam Newton is NEXT. In just five months, he's rewritten the rookie record book and revolutionized the most difficult and demanding job in sports. "Some people are afraid to say what they want, but I'm not," says Newton. "I want to be the symbol of success in this league. I want to win multiple Super Bowls. To get there, you have to have a relentless will to be something far greater than what you are. You gotta have that edge."

IN JUST ONE FULL SEASON as an FBS starter, the 6'5", 248-pound Newton won the 2011 BCS national championship and the Heisman Trophy while pulling off the stunning combo of leading the SEC in rushing and finishing second in the NCAA in passing efficiency. Scouts and draft experts, however, focused on Newton's lack of experience, the allegations that he'd transferred to Blinn College after two years at Florida to avoid academic expulsion for cheating or that his family was paid for him to attend Auburn. On many boards, he was ranked the second-best quarterback in the draft, behind Blaine Gabbert. NFL Network analyst Joe Theismann wasn't even sure whether the Auburn star was worthy of a first-round pick. The reviews were so harsh that Newton's mentor, Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, wondered whether they were fueled by racism. "But I can't sit up here and look at it like, oh man, my critics are racist," Newton says. "I blame JaMarcus Russell and to some degree Vince Young. If you have the opportunity to make that kind of money doing something you love to do, why would you screw it up? I'm trying to be a trailblazer. If Baylor's Robert Griffin decides to come out, I want people to say 'He can be the next Cam Newton' instead of 'He's gonna be the next JaMarcus Russell.'"

Newton showed up in Charlotte more than a little irked. He decided to talk only at required news conferences and let his play speak for itself. The plan started paying dividends after just two throws. Newton's third pass as a pro was a 77-yard touchdown. Despite not being able to work with Panthers coaches during the lockout, he became the first player in NFL history to throw for more than 400 yards in his debut, and through Week 2 he was at 854 total passing yards. "I had people who can't throw a football telling me my mechanics were wrong," says Newton. "I had people taking shots at my character, classifying me as a thug, as a hoodlum. After Week 3 or 4, all these same people wanted an interview. I said, 'You were giving me all this crap and had so much to say about how I was gonna play, and now you wanna talk? No. Just sit back and watch the show, man.'"

Through Week 15, Newton rushed for 11+ yards on 62.3 percent of his carries and threw for 21+ yards on 67.1 percent of his passes.

Newton's performance has been helped immeasurably by a progressive coaching staff and an offensive scheme bordering on genius. After 16 years without back-to-back winning seasons, Carolina hired highly respected defensive coordinator Ron Rivera as its new head coach, who in turn was clever and brave enough to surround his young quarterback with the kind of sharp offensive minds befitting Newton's $22 million price tag.

Breaking with the traditional way of thinking that a rookie quarterback should shut up and conform to a team's offensive playbook, Rivera hired Chudzinski, who'd coached with Rivera on Norv Turner's staff in San Diego. Pale-faced and bespectacled, the 43-year-old Chudzinski is an emerging rock star in NFL coaching circles. After arriving in Charlotte, he installed a variation of the Chargers' aggressive vertical passing offense while mixing in a heavy dose of the read-option package Newton ran at Auburn. There were also up to 10 run plays a game for the linebacker-size quarterback who showed up on the first day of practice and smoked the team's fastest players in a series of wind sprints. The brilliance of the plan was how malleable it was: As Newton's fundamentals and defensive recognitions improved, Chudzinski weaned him from his comfortable college plays to more of the vertical attack.

"Knowing how tough it is to figure this position out, I give a lot of credit to guys like Cam who were thrust in there as rookies and are playing so well," says Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. "That has to be exciting for those organizations to know they have quarterbacks who they can really build something around."

With much of the same lineup that finished dead last in total offense a year ago, Newton and Chudzinski had lifted Carolina to fifth overall through Week 15. Thanks to an NFL-best 80 plays of 20 or more yards, the Panthers' offensive production had jumped 134.7 yards per game. Newton, meanwhile, now owns the NFL record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback and broke Peyton Manning's old mark for yards passing by a rookie (3,739) in a 48-16 win over Tampa Bay on Dec. 24. Beyond the numbers, though, what has impressed Carolina's coaches the most has been Newton's ability to do what scouts said he couldn't: accept the tough lessons of a rookie quarterback, learn and absorb the corrections and immediately apply them on the field. "Cam's speed is what sets him apart, but it's his mental speed," says Panthers tight end Jeremy Shockey. "It's supposed to take a long time to pick this stuff up, but he always seems to be one step ahead of the game mentally."

After throwing three picks against Atlanta in Week 6, Newton devoured more than 12 hours of film. He was sloppy with the weight transfer on his feet, which led to inaccurate throws. Plus, he wasn't seeing fast enough when defenses would dial up an overload blitz and roll coverage over the top on the same side to bracket receiver Steve Smith. The next week, a more controlled Newton was 18-for-23 for 256 yards with two TDs (one passing, one rushing) and no turnovers in a 33-20 win over Washington. "The kid is a pretty Ferrari," Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall said afterward. "He can run. He can throw. He's got it all."


Newton already holds NFL records for most rushing TDs by a QB (14) and most yards passing for a rookie (3,893).
It's a style of quarterbacking Newton calls the Blender, dreamed up in the backyard of his childhood home in College Park, Ga. Under center, Nerf ball in hand, Newton mimicked the pre-snap mental wizardry of Manning. Then he'd mix in a little of Tom Brady's steadiness in the pocket and downfield touch. And when needed, Newton would add an explosive open-field style borrowed from Michael Vick. It's hard to fathom, but just five years removed from his backyard, it is Newton who now seems destined to be the player who completes the evolution of the multidimensional quarterback developed by Fran Tarkenton, Randall Cunningham, Steve Young and Vick. "Gone are the days of the drop-back quarterback who can only throw the ball," says Newton. "You know the new iPhone? It's faster, more powerful and smarter. It's revolutionary. Why can't the quarterback be like that? Why can't you be a big, tall, fast, quick, strong, smart, mobile quarterback who's unstoppable?"

If proving that you can, while also keeping your mouth shut, was Phase 1 for Newton, Phase 2 seems to be destroying Carolina's culture of losing. After having a 14-0 record as a starter in college, Newton wanted to explode when the Panthers lost five of their first six games. Hidden under that Gatorade towel, he was deathly silent after games. "I'm not even able to smile and say 'boom, look what I've done' because I'm so frustrated by our record," he says. "It just affects me so much when I see people smiling after the game, making plans to go out. I'm not used to it, and I want that type of mentality to be unanimous around here."

Around midseason, with his frustrations about to blow, Newton's cellphone rang. It was Ray Lewis, the Ravens' future Hall of Fame linebacker. "Baby boy," crackled the voice on the other end of the line, "whatcha so mad about? Listen here, you ain't going through nothing that anybody that is great hasn't been through."

A defiant Newton swallowed hard, stood up straight and tried to explain himself and Lewis filled his ear with laughter. "Four years," Lewis shouted. It took him four years to get Baltimore to .500. (In Year 5, the Ravens won the Super Bowl.) "This isn't who you are," Lewis said. "Why ain't you smiling? Get a damn smile on your face." To a man, Newton's teammates and coaches say they welcome his outspoken, unrelenting competitive fire. But if Ray Lewis calls out of the blue to say you're too intense, maybe it's time to chill a bit. "People are gonna respect the Panthers," says Newton. "And I want what I do as a quarterback to be scary. I want people to be in fear. I want it, and I'm gonna get it. But I realize now it's a process."

It's a progression Newton still finds humbling. The same week he broke Steve Grogan's single-season record for rushing TDs by a quarterback, Newton was seen rushing from the players' parking lot to the locker room with lunch from a chicken joint for all the veterans.

Figures. This season Newton has delivered on everything for Carolina, including lunch.

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. Follow The Mag on Twitter, @ESPNmag, and like us on Facebook.

http://espn.go.com/espn/next2012/story/_/id/7390540/nfl-carolina-panters-qb-cam-netwon-next-espn-magazine

[Saniflush]

THUG!

[Snaggletiger]

THUG!

Elitist pig.  He has his own barber.

[Saniflush]

Elitist pig.  He has his own barber.

Well when Ray Lewis calls you know it was is something thug related.

[AUChizad]

[Saniflush]

He's not the best color man in business for nothing folks.

[AWK]

You were giving me all this crap and had so much to say about how I was gonna play, and now you wanna talk? No. Just sit back and watch the show, man.

Boner.

[The Prowler]

Boner.

Was thinking the same thing, well not the boner part, but I was like, "Fuck yeah, shut those crow eating, pieces of shit up with your play...watch them squirm while they try to rationalize why they talked bad about you." Remember those fuckers were saying that in front of the camera, there ain't no telling what they were saying behind it.

[Tiger Wench]

My hubby told me today that I was obsessed with Cam.

That article made me moist.

Maybe he's right...

Cam obviously knows by name every one of those motherfuckers who lambasted him pre-draft.  I hope he makes every muthafukin one of them lick his boots before he grants one damn interview. Would not blame him ONE BIT.

[Townhallsavoy]

Alright, Wench.  I'll give you what you really want.

From the article:

[JR4AU]

Alright, Wench.  I'll give you what you really want.

From the article:

That smile is so fake.

[GH2001]

That smile is so fake.

And its obvious his muscles are airbrushed and the football is being suspended by fishing line.

[AUChizad]

http://www.panthers.com/media-vault/videos/Cam-Newton-Wired/f180dcc1-af02-4eb7-94c4-e2359c14f4b6

[Saniflush]

What a disingenuous thug!  You see the way he was congratulating everyone for their play?

[AUChizad]

What kind of thug makes children cry?

http://mrhump.blogspot.com/2011/12/auburn-christmas-wish-come-true.html

[AUChizad]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=lc-carpenter_cam_newton_panthers_jamarcus_russell_122911

Comparing Newton to Russell was foolish from start

By Les Carpenter

From the start we should have seen he wouldn’t fail. Cam Newton had too much going for him: his throws were too good, his running elusive and the will to be great burned brighter than most. Ron Rivera, the Carolina Panthers’ new coach, understood. He slipped into Auburn’s football stadium on the afternoon before Newton’s pro day and watched the quarterback run through all of the next day’s drills, repeating them until perfect and then noticed the other players gathered around him in genuine affection. That’s when he knew.

Cam Newton has accounted for 34 touchdowns this season, 20 passing and 14 rushing.

Perhaps this was where Rivera realized the Panthers would take Newton with the first pick in the NFL draft and that he would start Newton despite the lockout that took the summer and the just one season as a starter on a major college football team that made him seem so unready for the NFL. There would be other moments of discovery: a private breakfast, a meeting with the family and everything kept pointing to one thing.

“I didn’t draft him to save us, I drafted him to come lead us,” Rivera said just before the start of the season.

But in the end Newton might just save them after all. On Sunday he will throw for his 4,000th yard. It will make this, statistically, the best season a rookie quarterback has ever had. The marvel of this will be lost because the Panthers are rebuilding and there have been brilliant seasons from older, more polished passers like Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Tom Brady – men who have won championships.

And yet this week the talk is about race because of something Newton said in a magazine interview, swiping away the stigma dangled over his name simply over other men’s failures. Because no matter how good he was in college, no matter how much he impressed in interviews with teams and tried desperately to prove he was a leader, there was always a comparison to JaMarcus Russell. Like Newton, Russell was a one-year star in the SEC with great physical promise. Like Newton, Russell was destined to be the first overall pick. And like Newton, Russell was African-American. And so the link was made.

Really they were nothing alike. Russell clearly didn’t love football. He didn’t grasp what it took to be Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, and showed little interest in trying to be great. He didn’t want to be a leader and it showed in the way he ballooned over 300 pounds and slumped out of the league as a punch line to an expensive joke.

“I blame JaMarcus Russell and to some degree, Vince Young,” Newton said in an ESPN The Magazine interview. “If you have the opportunity to make that kind of money doing something you love to do, why would you screw it up? I’m trying to be a trail blazer. If Baylor’s Robert Griffin decides to come out I want people to say, ‘He can be the next Cam Newton not he can be the next JaMarcus Russell.’ ”

Cam Newton broke Peyton Manning's record for most passing yards in a season for a rookie quarterback. He'll likely hit the 4,000 yard mark in Sunday's season finale.

Time will tell how much of a trail blazer Newton becomes. But there are so many signs that say he can be great. Rivera could see some of them back in September, when a week before the season’s start, he talked of a player who had already endured more scrutiny than almost anyone who had entered the draft in the decades before. Who else had been a front-page-top-of-the-newscast debate the way Newton was through his season at Auburn with the allegations his father auctioned him around the SEC, the undefeated season and the daily debate over his worthiness to be the No. 1 pick? Rivera figured Newton would struggle on the field given the small time to prepare but he never doubted his new quarterback’s strength to handle the bad times.

Only there weren’t that many. Sure the Panthers lost, but the Panthers were supposed to lose. They were the worst team in the league last season and nobody turns themselves around that fast. What surprised the NFL was how Newton kept Carolina close, pulling it to a few victories and selling a hope no one could have imagined.

On that same September day when Rivera said he believed in his new quarterback, Newton stood behind the team’s stadium, not far from a set of railroad tracks. A freight train thundered by and for a moment he watched it and smiled faintly.

“Everybody knows some things, some controversial things that happened to me last year and it affected me,” he said. “Did I show it to people? Some people I showed it to, some people I didn’t. For me I did feel it. That’s the funny thing about life: the human elements take over at some point. You just got to work with what you got. If people throw you a roadblock it can be a speed bump or a roadblock but sooner or later you’ve got to keep going. It depends on that person on how long he stays at that particular point in his life.”

JaMarcus Russell? Vince Young? Akili Smith? Ryan Leaf? The comparisons to any quarterback who shot to the top of the draft without much experience are ridiculous. Cam Newton was different than all of them. The signs were there. This season shouldn’t have been a surprise.

[JR4AU]

Sadly, I don't even remember much about the "pre November 2010 Cam Newton".  I know he came to Auburn with a bit of a cloud over him from the "laptop incident".  But he'd done what was asked of him by the legal system, and paid a personal price by having to leave UF.  He had been humbled by the setback, and taken his medicine at Blinn, and oh, by the way, won a championship there too.

 After that, it's all a blur of blogosphere conjecture, internet rumor, and even outright damned lies, with Auburn's second National Championship, and third Heisman winner to punctuate the otherwise shapeless blur that was the 2010 season.  I said I would shed tears of joy if Auburn won, but when the final field goal was kicked, I was numb.  Continuous internet and talk radio assaults on Auburn, Auburn men and women, Cam, Cam's father, and anything Auburn ruled the day, and left me completely numb from early Nov. 2010, until that unprecedented  email from the NCAA appeared exonerating Auburn of any wrongdoing with regards to Cam, and the HBO 4.  Still, a few persist in "just knowing Cam got paid".   

Until 2010, Bo was, arguably, the greatest college football player ever.  He was without question, except in Charles Barkley's mind, the greatest athlete Auburn had ever seen.  He was mentioned in the same breath as Jim Thorpe, Jim Brown, Hershel Walker, and a scant few others of that ilk.  There are not many, but Bo stands out for one reason, his career was incomplete, yet his greatness was recognized.  Bo's career was cut short in the NFL by a freakish injury that Dr. Andrews said was caused mainly because Bo was so strong.  Most athletes knees would have given on that fateful play, but Bo's strength caused him to pull his own hip out of socket.  With today's medical advancement, should Cam suffer an injury, he'll likely be able to return.  And even still ESPN named Bo to the top 100 Athletes of the century, and even did an hour long show about him.   Hershel didn't make this list.   After an hour of some top notch athletes in both baseball and football wowing at Bo's prowess,  it ended with the show's host asking "what might have been?"  Bo would be the NFL leader in yards per carry had he had enough carries to qualify.   Bo averaged 5.4, surpassing Jim Brown at 5.2.

Nearly 30 years later, we come to Cam.  Their Auburn careers differ greatly.  Bo had 4 seasons, Cam just one.  Both won a Heisman.   One came within a breath of a NC, the other took home the trophy.     They are comparable in a few other ways, mainly being physical freaks of nature.  Bo was listed at 6'2" 222 at Auburn, but most believe he was much heavier by his Sr. year, close to 250.   Running backs of that size are rare still today, but running backs of that size that also run sub 4.2 in the 40?  Bo, so far as anybody knows, it the only one.  Hell, even the mighty mites like Darren Sproles are only in the 4.3-4.4 range. 

The NFL combine numbers on Cam?  6'5" 248 lbs, running a 4.59 40.  But Cam is a QB.  Dan Marino was considered a large QB, and was listed at 6'4" 228, and well all know he was essentially a statue in the pocket.  Peyton Manning 6'5" 230, same same.  Cam is bigger than those 2 hall of famers plus faster than 90% of the front 7 of any NFL team, and probably faster than 50% of the DBs in the league.   And he has caught on to the NFL game as quick or quicker than Peyton Manning, a  sure fire first ballot hall of famer.  He surpassed Manning's rookie passing yardage mark in 15 games, and set the all time (not rookie) mark for rushing TDs by a QB plus won more games in his rookie season than Manning.

They, ESPN, will make a show about Cam one day.  All about Cam.  I suspect when they do, he'll own a ring from a JUCO national championship, a D1 National Championship, and at least 1 Super Bowl Ring, along with Pro Bowl rings, and talk of being a hall of famer.  The only thing I hope for that show, when it's made, is that Cam isn't painted like a "thug that got lucky." I hope, that Cam, and his deeds are finally seen for what they are, and for who he is.  A good guy, that made some minor mistakes early, that was vilified by haters due to his success.   I want to see him portrayed as a victim that didn't act like a victim.  I want him seen as a guy that overcame his own mistakes, and overcame being one of the biggest victims of hate and lynch mob mentality in modern day sports.  I want to see that smile recognized for what it is...Cam being Cam, and loving his craft.  I want people to realize that Cam means it when he says "it's the season of giving" right after he's made a young Auburn fan's Christmas by giving him a football used to set a Panther's record.  I want people to realize that Cam, has only been "caught on tape" doing good deeds like his visits to the local elementary school near Auburn, and his football gifts at NFL games.   And that the "bad" about Cam, for the most part, is unsubstantiated conjecture and rumor. 

Lastly, I want Auburn men and women to realize how lucky we are, that in all the world of sports there are few names that can be mentioned as "arguably the best that ever was" that we may have witnessed 2 play in Auburn.  That it may be a bit early to mention Cam in that high company, but that he appears headed to those heights, and that Auburn can, at this point, probably claim 2 of these types of athletes as part of the Auburn Family.   Not many college fan bases can even claim one, let alone 2.

[War Eagle!!!]

[AUChizad]

Good shit. Should be a front pager.

However, with that said, I LOL'ed pretty hard at this.

[JR4AU]

You wouldnt get it anyway.