Jan xiii, 2016

  • Tim KeownESPN Senior Writer

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    • Senior Writer for ESPN The Magazine
    • Columnist for ESPN.com
    • Author of five books (iii NYT all-time-sellers)

His son had a tendency to speak a bit as well much in class. The boy liked attending, which caused a problem for his teachers and -- past extension -- his parents. So one day, Cecil Newton had an idea. He told his son, "Cam, since you desire people to discover you, you can wearing apparel up on Fridays. That way, everybody will discover you."

Starting that next Friday, Cam Newton left the house for middle school wearing a long-sleeve button-downwardly, slacks and dress shoes. He did information technology without complaint, almost cheerfully, and before long the practice wasn't restricted to Fridays.

"He's enjoying this," Cecil told his wife, Jackie.

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 assailment, laughing when we look seriousness. The default response to success in a game of rage and combat is belligerence: an angry pose or a tearing firing of the brawl into the turf. And yet here is the rarest of men: i 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't been said well-nigh Cam Newton. Fair point. He'south so well-known nationally that he's been charged with the unenviable job of making yogurt look cool. He is going to exist the MVP over Teflon Tom Brady -- a fact cherished by some equally most historical and by others every bit something shut 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 lot probably have an opinion of the guy.

But and so again, at that place'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 admittedly no involvement in being ordinary in anything. He stands at his postgame news conference with regal shoes i calendar week, swirling black-and-white the next. "I don't know where he gets those shoes," says his father, Cecil Newton. "Really, I accept absolutely no idea."

Cam plays football as if he owns the entire field, every single blade of information technology. As the Falcons were being introduced at Atlanta'due south Georgia Dome before the Panthers' only loss, in Calendar week 16, Newton stood just beyond the tunnel formed by cheerleaders and band, almost shut enough to be singed by two cylinders of flame at the dorsum of the end zone. No other Panthers teammate or autobus was nearly him, and he stood alpine and however, an infantry line of photographers crouched at his feet. He stared at each Atlanta player every bit the Falcons waited for their names to exist announced, as if making sure his six-foot-five, 245-pound body was the commencement thing they saw every bit they prepared to play the game.

"I don't know why he does that," says backup quarterback Derek Anderson. "I see it, but I haven't figured information technology out. I approximate because he tin can?"

You could exist angered by this. Your telephone 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 contest. And if yous lean in that direction and aren't offended, fear not. Chances are at that place'south another opportunity on its mode.

In the second quarter against the Falcons, after an inspiring, borderline-reckless 1-on-11 run for 8 yards and a outset downwards, Newton took a walk through the Falcons' secondary. He was in no hurry -- the officials chosen for a measurement, which was accompanied by the obligatory eight commercials, and Newton seemed to have a maestro's feel for the game'due south staccato rhythms. The bulletin behind the walk, conscious or not: I'yard going to get hither presently enough, and then I might as well cheque it out outset.

These are the actions that effort men's souls. "Some teams get offended when he does stuff," Anderson says. "He made a good bespeak: If you don't want to watch me dance, exercise something about it. Merely so over again, when he said that, information technology was another thing for people to take criminal offense to." Anderson laughs at the absurdity of Life With Cam. Information technology'due south like the Old Attestation: Something is e'er 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 demote, paying no attention as the guy goes almost his business like a waiter refilling a drinking glass. Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, a friend and mentor of Newton'south, says, "When people become upset near the towel, I tell them, 'Relax, he'south only wearing it because information technology says Gatorade on it.'"

Then, inevitably, Cam will score, at which signal the hyperventilation reaches Pinnacle Cam. This happens often -- 10 times while running this season, 35 by passing -- and his touchdown celebrations are typically three-act plays that straddle the never-before-straddled line between Figaro and Monty Python. Against the Buccaneers in Calendar week 17, for instance, he sneaked in from the 1, and the word sneak -- diminutive to begin with -- has never felt more inadequate. At that place is cypher sneaky about him. It is a Quarterback Surge, and as he pops up to begin whatever might happen next, it's not unreasonable to believe that the touchdowns have go secondary to what follows.

"Some people don't know how to accept it because he's not your prototypical, white dropback passer," says Anderson, who is all three. "He doesn't practise things exactly the way people have washed it at the position for the past 50 years, and some people get offended. That's on them for non having an open mind."

IN CHARLOTTE'S Bank OF AMERICA STADIUM, the pre-touchdown anticipation is quite a thing. As the Panthers get closer to the end zone, an energy builds -- everyone wants to exist in on it, in on Cam, in on whatever he decides might come next. He always gives the ball to a child in the stands, which (of form) is seen by some every bit charming and (of grade) by others as calculating. There'south no doubting what the kids think: They come streaming toward the end zone, Kuechly jerseys and Olsen jerseys and mostly Newton jerseys racing out of their seats and bounding down the aisle similar skiers on a loma.

Later the first of 2 rushing touchdowns against the Bucs, Newton ran to the right corner of the end zone and gave the ball to a child who may or may not have been sitting anywhere almost that spot, and so he ran plane-swoop-style across the back of the end zone, 54 yards from ane side of the field to the other, where he left-turned information technology up the Panthers' sideline and gathered speed to practise this Euro-step/jump-shot routine with teammates Joe Webb and Anderson -- "We don't have a name for it," Anderson says -- before making his manner to the demote.

No dance. No pose. No semaphoric nod to Superman.

Sedate, for him.

A two-alert celebration.

And while Moon dislikes the celebrations -- "I like that he gives the ball to a child," he says, "simply I think the quarterback gets plenty attention already" -- Cecil Newton says, "People go so far equally to fourth dimension his celebrations. They're timing him. They'll say, 'four.1 seconds is the norm, and he took it to 8.3.' If you're that scientifically concerned with a celebration, you have bigger problems than whatever he's doing."

And that's the crux of the whole matter, right at that place. The sclerotic responses to a swain'due south smile, the granular dissections of each dance move, the people timing his celebrations -- it all stems from a elementary fact: Newton is taking a position associated with stern reserve and muted shows of excitement and turning it into Carnaval. He'south not a quarterback; he's a Rorschach test.

ON SEVERAL Feb days in 2011, four students sat earlier Cam Newton in a classroom at the Academy of California, San Diego: two boys with a limited knowledge of football game, a girl with none and a boy who had played in high school. They were employees of the athletic department, kids who picked up a few extra bucks and an athletic department polo to referee Ultimate Frisbee intramurals. Each sat earlier Newton with a notebook and an assignment: empathize the intricacies of an NFL play based on what y'all're taught by the large homo at the front of the room.

"Yous're the professor, Cam," said George Whitfield Jr., Newton's pre-draft quarterbacks coach. "I'll know how much you lot know past what they plow in."

Cecil Newton wanted two words -- athlete and raw -- stricken from his son'southward tape. "Leave no stone unturned," Cecil told Whitfield afterward he listened to Moon and ignored well-nigh anybody else by hiring a (then-)relatively unknown quarterbacks guru to train his son.

Whitfield breaks down the NFL'southward pre-typhoon Kabuki into three parts: 1) The Runway -- whether you expect the part in the NFL'due south fashion evidence; two) The Résumé -- what y'all've accomplished; and iii) The Campaign -- the buzz swirling around you.

Cecil Newton enlisted Warren Moon and Whitfield, two African-American former quarterbacks (Whitfield played at Segmentation Ii Tiffin University and in the Arena League) who knew the uniqueness of Cam's entrada. "Whitfield," Cecil told him, "I'k either going to exist a genius or a jackass for hiring you."

Information technology'south Whitfield's contention that football has 21 positions and the office of the quarterback. It's fine for a wide receiver to know his assignment and nada else, but not a quarterback. Before he put Newton in front end of the classroom, Whitfield told him, "I know you know what you lot're supposed to exercise, but that'due south not enough: Yous need to bring them with yous on this."

And then those four students found themselves sitting in that location in front end of a Heisman Trophy winner, taking notes.

Belatedly IN THE third quarter against the Buccaneers, in a game that had been decided long before, Newton threw a pass to wide receiver Brenton Bersin, who got a first downward, fought for yardage and ended up losing the ball when information technology was stripped past Lavonte David.

After the fumble, Bersin moved with his teammates forth the sideline in the ectoplasmic horde, trying to lose himself in the humanity. Nobody acknowledged him, probably out of sympathy more than spite, until i large man grabbed him by the arm.

"Proceed doing that," Newton told Bersin. "Keep being you. Keep making plays and fighting."

Bring them with you. Before in the game, Webb recovered a fumbled punt and returned it to the Bucs' 3-yard line. He stood up after existence tackled and most immediately found himself face up to face with Newton, who was jumping up and downward and running onto the field almost before Webb was tackled.

"I thought we were going to become a penalty," Webb says. "When I saw him my kickoff idea was, 'What are you lot doing out here?'"

What is he doing out there? Or perchance the question should be: What isn't he doing out in that location? 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 afterwards a first downwardly.

In that location comes a indicate in every Cam Newton story where the obligatory must be said, and this fourth dimension it'south courtesy of Panthers defensive back Cortland Finnegan: "He's a big child out there. Y'all can't take what he does personally. You lot only can't. It's who he is. You watch him and realize he's having a bang-up time, and no game is too large for him."

Information technology's quite different from the whispers that followed him into the league. That he sometimes sulked every bit the Panthers went 6-x and 7-ix his commencement ii 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'south terminology, playing the position merely non occupying the office.

Football players are notoriously and probably unnecessarily leery of dealing in specifics. Even the near laudatory comments are full general ("He tin can really hitting receivers in tight windows") or intentionally vague ("He'south got a skilful experience for the game"). Merely when Anderson discusses Newton, information technology'due south obvious he'due south got to pull himself back. He wants to lay it all out; he simply knows he tin can't. And so he discusses Newton'south transformation from a quarterback who follows directions to one who gives them. "Sometimes he'll encounter something and I'm like, 'Damn, how did he come with that?'" Against the Bucs, Newton told quarterbacks bus Ken Dorsey he wanted to brand 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 serial it was creating confusion in the Bucs' secondary on a day when Newton completed 21 of 26 passes.

"The get-go couple of years, when we'd come to play Cam, we knew he was a big, potent, athletic quarterback," says Finnegan, who has played with three other teams in his 10-twelvemonth career. "As a secondary, we'd say, 'Well, he's not very accurate; he'southward not comfortable in the pocket notwithstanding.' Only at present? To see him in person at present? It's night and twenty-four hours. It'due south like -- wow!"

THE CONVERSATION was rattling around the SUV the dark earlier Newton's pro solar day at Auburn. He was taking his father, Whitfield and Moon on a tour: the campus, the football facility, his favorite barbecue joint. The next day -- March 8, 2011 -- would be the twenty-four hours to cement his spot as the No. 1 pick, and the automobile couldn't hold his enthusiasm.

"How was your pro day?" Newton asked Moon, who had get a mentor. "You were the blue-chip dude back then. I bet information technology was outrageous."

Cecil and Whitfield braced themselves every bit the question sat there, unanswered, the air in the motorcar suddenly thick.

Eventually, Moon said, "I didn't have a pro mean solar day."

Newton recoiled. "Nah. Nah. That can't be true." Newton knew Moon's legacy: briefing player of the year at Washington, '78 Rose Bowl MVP, threw for well-nigh 50,000 yards in the NFL after spending the offset six years of his career in Canada.

Only no pro solar day? Confused, Newton said, "I thought they had pro days back and then."

Moon, offering the bare minimum: "They did."

"Well, were you injure?" Newton asked.

"No."

Newton, for once, didn't know what to say, and so he kept finding new ways to limited his disbelief.

Moon interrupted: "My coaches told me the scouts wanted to run into me catch passes and punts, two things I'd never done earlier. They told me if I didn't want to exercise that, I wasn't having a pro day. So I didn't have a pro day."

The tour connected in silence.

Let'S Exist CLEAR: Nobody is suggesting that Cam Newton is Jackie Robinson. But within locker rooms, he is viewed as a figure of cultural significance. He came forth when blackness quarterbacks, a grouping traditionally viewed as monolithic in the NFL, were in danger of being relegated (once over again) to catching punts and running routes. Vince Young, taken No. 3 by the Titans in '06, could not transition from college to pro. JaMarcus Russell, merely the second African-American quarterback to be called No. i overall, gear up the Raiders dorsum several years after they picked him in the 2007 draft. Michael Vick had spent 21 months in prison.

If Russell's but sin had been ineffective quarterbacking, perchance Newton would have had less of a burden to bear. Just non but was Russell bad, he was as well lazy, more interested in clubs than arts and crafts. There had been many, many draft busts before him, just JaMarcus Russell's failure and so enraged the league that information technology created a rookie salary structure to protect its teams from whatsoever future JaMarcus Russells.

Cam Newton was not JaMarcus Russell, and he was not Vince Young, but they rode shotgun, like cackling demons he was forced to exorcise. "Cam didn't want the stereotypes to stick to him, so he did everything right," Finnegan says. "All those stereotypes were gleaming right in his face, but he chose to put in the work to get rid of them."

There are videos of Whitfield and Newton on high school and college fields in San Diego, working on the about granular aspects of throwing a football. Cam pointing his left toe at the target, Cam waiting to thread the ball through the just open window when two dummy defenders movement to close the one that came before, Cam dancing effectually cones with helium-calorie-free anxiety while keeping his optics downfield. Whitfield likes to repeat the words of 49ers offensive coordinator Geep Chryst, who says quarterbacking is like "Jeopardy!": You not only have to be right, you have to be right fast.

"No doubt Cam'southward the guy who paved the manner," says Webb, a quarterback who also returns kicks and has played receiver. "He fabricated it easier for that side by side guy, and the guy later on that. Coming after JaMarcus Russell, he fix the tone. Hey, nosotros tin can not only be bang-up players, we can exist slap-up quarterbacks."

Newton'southward chore entering the league was to do everything right: speak right, apparel right, train right. It came naturally. "His pride will never let you lot discount him," Whitfield says. Yet, it had to be a stated, calculated plan. He couldn't get away with beingness merely polite in his interviews, or deferential to ability or bourgeois in his wearing apparel. He had to exist across reproach. He wore a push-downwardly shirt, a sweater belong and khakis when he appeared on Jon Gruden'due south QB Camp show. He kept his shoes tied and his shirt tucked in from the moment he parked his car at a do field to the moment he started information technology dorsum up. He threw at the combine, rare for a pinnacle quarterback.

He knew where the eyes were trained. His 1 year at Auburn was indomitable and dominated by an NCAA eligibility investigation that centered on claims that Cecil Newton and a sometime Mississippi State histrion shopped Cam to the Bulldogs for a price in the $150,000 range. The 13-month probe concluded with the NCAA finding no violations, but that didn't finish NFL teams from sending private investigators to Auburn to speak to food service workers, frat boys and sorority girls. They spoke to bartenders, fifty-fifty though Newton has never touched alcohol. "The worst thing they found?" Whitfield says. "Sometimes he rode his scooter without a helmet."

The adjacent year, 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 Bays flavour merely hounded by those associating him with a lack of desire, maturity and leadership qualities, had shown upwardly at his pro 24-hour interval with a DJ. He might be playing in Canada.

"There was a heavy cloud and a lot of pressure level 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 coin and flop like the remainder of them. I know how I'one thousand built and how I helped build my son. I knew information technology 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 customs service and a pretrial programme) and rumors of academic venial. Earlier the typhoon, NFL Network annotator Mike Mayock cautioned against taking Newton with the No. 1 pick, saying, "It's but this gut feeling that I accept that I don't know how bang-up he wants to be." And, "Something tells me he'll be content to be a multimillionaire who'south pretty good." And, "I retrieve 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 squad at the combine, Newton was asked whether he sees himself more equally a true cat or a dog. When he suggested that the question was non relevant and that he saw himself more as a human being existence, he was immediately asked whether he had a problem with authority.

"African-American quarterbacks go analyzed in means 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 fifty-fifty a carper must concede is impressive. In the offseason, he fulfilled a promise he fabricated to his mother and returned to Auburn to stop a degree in folklore. It's the kind of CV that generally revs the myth-making car. And yet afterwards the Panthers won at Tennessee, a Nashville female parent wrote a alphabetic character to The Charlotte Observer that reached Peak What-Volition-We-Tell-The-Children. Addressed directly to Newton, the letter complained about "chest puffs" and "pelvic thrusts" that were then egregious she was left with no choice but to divert her 9-year-old daughter's gaze to the Titans' cheerleaders, plain considering zero 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 nearly shut-minded thing you could say."

Does any other athlete have the power to incite such torment? Or to defuse it? Considering the letter-writer, Rosemary Plorin, backtracked later Newton publicly apologized for offending her while continuing to profess allegiance to the basic tenets of having fun. "I am distressing I didn't understand him meliorate until this calendar week," Plorin wrote.

"Here'south 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 accept happened in June, and he'd be dorsum on the wall for July. It wouldn't be about the recognition or the awards, it would exist, 'I'chiliad going to exist the most outstanding person in this bank, and this bank is going to be the all-time bank in the neighborhood."

THEY WERE STILL driving around Auburn -- Cecil, Whitfield, Moon, Cam and his blood brother CJ -- when someone from the Buffalo Bills called. It was late afternoon, and several of the squad'due south decision-makers wanted to have dinner with Cam.

"What practice you take to article of clothing?" Moon asked.

"I've got my dark UnderArmour sweatsuit or my gray UnderArmour sweatsuit," Cam said.

Nobody said anything, and by this betoken he knew what the silence in the auto meant. You can't give in; you can't give them what they expect. He had to fight the campaign, and that meant existence improve-dressed and amend-prepared and meliorate-mannered than anyone who came before him.

"You think I should vesture something unlike?" he asked.

"You might want to brand this more formal," Moon said.

Cam had no objection.

And then the 5 guys collection to the mall, in a hurry. Cecil quarterbacked, jotting down sizes and assigning himself the job of finding a shirt. He told CJ to detect a pair of slacks. Moon was told to look for a tie. Cam and Whitfield were in charge of shoes and socks.

Inside minutes, Cecil held upward a low-cal bluish 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 banking concern.

HE RARELY CONSENTS to interviews, choosing to do only the league-mandated postgame, midweek and network-Television spots, indicating in that location are levels of fame to which he is not willing to ascend. (Either that or Slightly Mysterious Fame, set against the backdrop of club'southward demand for overexposure, is its own accelerant.) He cannot acquiesce to any of the countless one-on-i interview requests, the Panthers say, lest he experience obligated to accede to them all. Everywhere only on the field, he plays the fetishized office assigned to him past The Office. He speaks in complete, rote sentences calculated to polish the least calorie-free on any topic he is addressing.

You tin can't give them what they look. In many ways, the campaign can never terminate. As Cecil says, "There'southward an audition waiting for him to lose and then they can say, 'Now'due south our time to talk. He'south had his time, at present it'due south our plow.' Nosotros already know that'south out there."

All those Employee of the Calendar month photos lining the wall, and gauge what? Something weird did happen. On Dec. 30, Cam appear the birth of his first child, the boy he named Chosen. The mother, Kia Proctor, was described by Newton as his "longtime girlfriend." The annunciation, made six days subsequently the boy was born, hit the front end page of the local papers (of course) and occasioned some other finger-wagging letter of the alphabet to The Charlotte Observer (of course.) Patricia Broderick of Mooresville expressed her disappointment in Newton and suggested he marry the female parent of his child. "Congratulations would exist in order," she wrote, "if he had been human being plenty to marry the female parent of his child and make a home."

Well, of grade she said that. Tom Brady can have a kid out of wedlock -- and get out the actress/female parent for a supermodel earlier the baby was born -- and not be blamed for the systemic deterioration of the American family unit and the scourge of fatherless households. For Newton, it was yet another lens through which to view him, every bit if maturity, greed and race weren't plenty. The son of a church bishop, the middle son of a tight-knit family unit, Newton had given them something they expected.

"I want it to be known that his mother and I are staunch Christian proponents of wedlock and all things pertaining to legitimacy," Cecil says. "I take iii sons and one woman, and I have been a living example all his life of what a man should be in a family. Cam is 26 years former, not xviii or 19. He has a heightened consciousness of who he is as a man, and I e'er tell him the decisions you lot brand you have to live with short and long term. I don't style it as a mistake; I style information technology every bit something that can be a gift for him and the young lady. We're going to support them in every aspect -- physically, emotionally and spiritually."

Against Atlanta, subsequently Chosen was born but before the earth knew, Newton scored and incorporated a babe-rocking move into his celebration. After the loss, and afterwards he had spent most an hour in silence at his locker, he was asked what the gesture meant. He dismissed the question with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head, making it clear it was a private message in a public moment.

The next week, later on the flavour-ending win over the Bucs, which gave the Panthers the NFC'south No. one seed, Newton walked into the interview room wearing a three-quarter-length sports coat, blueish slacks, the swirly blackness-and-white shoes and no foxtail.

As the news conference wound down, Newton was asked what he will call back from the 2015 regular season. It was a softball, light and fluffy and lobbed over the heart of the plate.

Newton paused, and his smile vanished.

"We shouldn't have lost," he said, his phonation trailing. "We shouldn't take lost."

That's it? After 15 wins and 35 touchdown passes and countless dances and all those unnamed Euro-step/leap shots, he will call up the loss? The one loss? Information technology seems the NFL'southward resident big kid -- has the NFL considered a Big Kid Laureate programme? -- would cite a particularly memorable dance move, or a trivial boy who was especially moved after being handed a ball after a touchdown, or an open-field juke that inflicted exceptional and long-lasting embarrassment on a linebacker.

But no. The one loss -- non the NFL-best 4 game-winning drives, not the 14 straight wins to beginning the season, non the records, non the rising to the illustrious pantheon of the nearly fetishized gods in sport. No. The loss. The mood in the room shifts. The interview is over, and equally Cam Newton walks away from the podium he leaves behind a lingering sense of that rarest of emotions: surprise.