Cam Newton Says the Panthers Are Avoiding His Legacy. He's Right.
In an unusually tender moment from his most recent episode of the "4th and 1" podcast, former Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton opened up to his cohosts on his feelings about his former team.
The conversation came about after Newton and his team watched a video of former Panthers players, including Steve Smith, Thomas Davis, and Luke Kuechly, all with the current Carolina squad in Germany for their recent game against the New York Giants. Newton says he was not invited.
After watching the video, Newton, who was widely known for his big smile and even bigger personality during his playing days, looked downtrodden as he spoke.
"I don't have no quarrel with nobody in the Panthers organization," said Newton, who went on to say that he noticed that the Panthers had no memorabilia or merchandise of Newton within their facility when he visited last year.
"At this particular point in time, the question was 'Oh, we don't know if Cam's retired yet.' Newsflash: I'm never going to retire. I know I've played my last piece of football. It don't matter to me to officially retire.
"So when I see certain things happen like this... I didn't even know certain opportunities existed. Did it hurt my feelings? Yes, it did... I gave this city everything."
Seeing a group of team legends together without him is certainly reason for Newton to be upset. The Panthers were largely irrelevant when they selected Newton with the number one overall pick in 2011. His impact to the team - and the city of Charlotte - was immediate. In his nine seasons with the team, he led Carolina to four playoff appearances (including three division titles in a row) and to Super Bowl 50 in 2015, the same year he became the first (and only) Panther in NFL history to win MVP.
There has been an appearance of a rift between Newton and the Panthers over the last few years. After releasing him following the 2019 season (after Matt Rhule was hired as head coach), Carolina reached back out to Newton in November of 2021, and signed him for the rest of the 21-22 season. Despite leading them to a big win over the Arizona Cardinals in his first game back, Newton lost each subsequent start until he was benched by Rhule. Newton was not re-signed, and has remained a free agent ever since.
There have been rumors that owner David Tepper was the reason Newton was released in the first place, but Newton has stated that he has "no quarrel with David Tepper." To this day, the world is still unsure of who made the final decision to release Carolina's greatest player of all time.
Newton has said that the Panthers are avoiding his legacy. In a way, he's right. Carolina's social media team heavily involves former players, but Newton has been left out. According to Newton, he even approached the team in the past with the idea of interviewing Panthers legends, including players such as Greg Olsen, Thomas Davis, Luke Kuechly, and Steve Smith, for the sake of the fans. Newton also said that this idea would be a good way to "pass the torch to Bryce Young." The team did not take Newton up on his offer.
There is some grey area regarding Newton's "retirement" status in the league. Newton hasn't played a down of football in years but says he doesn't want to "officially" retire. That may be a reason why the team has seemingly left Newton out in the cold; they may not be able to do anything with him while he's still considered a free agent.
Regardless of whether or not NFL rules prohibit such a thing, the fact of the matter is this: Cam Newton is the greatest player in the history of the Carolina Panthers. Yet, the team has disrespected him, the memory of what he did for the team, and his overall legacy. If the team truly wanted to bring in a new quarterback after 2019, Newton would have been a solid bridge QB, despite his injuries beginning to take a toll on him at that point.
Newton was instead kicked to the curb. Ever since then, Bank of America Stadium has become a revolving door at both QB and head coach. The hope amongst the team is that they have finally found an answer at those respective positions with Bryce Young and Dave Canales. Perhaps Young could benefit from having a mentor such as Newton.
For now, the Panthers and Newton will continue to sit far apart from each other.
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