BL 11-15
It's borderline sacrilegious, our love and respect for our star athletes, really.
They’re people just as well all are, albeit with specialized talents. But we all have special talents of our own, as well. I was blessed to help lead a summer camp of high schoolers in the summer and met a boy who, on top of being a top performer on his school’s football team, was able to both let me listen to two (pretty good) songs he wrote and recorded in his closet and verbally explain to me the intricacies of preparing jerk chicken pasta. I explained to him that to be able to do any of those three things at a decent level is rare and he was proficient at all three as a sophomore in high school. I say that to say, our athletes, even at lower levels, must operate at a pretty high frequency on many fronts to be stars.
Take for instance the premier position in American team sports; the football quarterback. Not only are the physical requirements of the position hard to come by (footwork, arm talent, core strength, to name a few), but the plethora of intangible qualities (leadership, toughness, charisma) that are needed in conjunction with the talent is rare, to say the least.
So rare, that there can only be one on the field at a time.
In the best football league the world has to offer, the National Football League, there are 32 men that fill these slots. Needless to say, there are not 32 men that fill that position optimally; as I said, the combination of physical, mental, and emotional tools it takes to play the position is incredibly difficult to find.
So, when you do find it, it's seldom a good idea to let that guy go.
But, sometimes… oftentimes… well, really every time, that guy has to go at some point. The greatest example of the combination of these mental and physical tools is a man named Tom Brady and his team had to let him go at some point. The second best example, whoever you think it is, was probably let go too.
Yet, most times, if that guy was a good example of the combination, the team that let him go eventually would have liked him to return.
So is the case of the Carolina Panthers, who, after enjoying the best example of that combination they ever got, Cam Newton, let him go for a similar (not exact) reason that Tom Brady’s team let him go, and Peyton Manning’s team and so on.
Because they didn’t want to keep him anymore.
Simple as that. If they wanted to keep him they would have. But they did not.
Lucky for the Panthers, they got an opportunity that Brady and Manning’s former teams did not. They resigned the best example of the combination they ever got at a time when both they and Newton really needed it.
A few things happened in the interim though. To make a long story short, both the Panthers and Newton sucked without each other. There were some bright points for each. Moments where the divorced seemed like a natural transition to better days. But the better days never came and the Panthers had to look through their whiskers at Cam and Cam had to look through the dreads spilling out of his fedora at the Panthers and say “I need you.”
Now, for some context. This is not simply a reunion rooted in loose ends and just dues. This is an irony-riddled fiasco with a (let Newton tell it) God-ordained progression. Since Newton was released by Carolina, the team and Newton, though in different regions of the east coast, dealt with unprecedented failure. Not unprecedented because both parties missed the playoffs or performed poorer than they ever had, but because they did so without the security they provided each other.
Let me explain. I’ve been a Carolina Panther fan for my whole life. I’ve also been an NFL fan my whole life. The reason the quarterback is so important in today’s league is not only because of rules that help the quarterback and the offense (though that's apart of it) it is because, as fans and (effectively) organizations (because the business will ultimately cater to the interests of their patrons) having a quarterback with a good combination of those qualities we were talking about, gives us security. We may lose. We may lose a lot. But as long as we have a guy we are secure in, we’re good. We believe we can beat anyone.
Likewise, I played a little quarterback in my day. There is nothing like having a team, fans, and a program or organization that you are secure in. That you know, if you throw an interception, lose a game, or lose a string of games, still has that faith in you.
Ask anyone associated with the Carolina Panthers if they felt secure with the guys they had playing quarterback for them the past two seasons. Ask Newton if he felt secure competing for first-team snaps in the past two training camps.
It wasn’t there. This needed to happen. However, it doesn’t come without its awkwardness.
I attended what the Panthers call ‘Fan Fest’ in August, where, just before the first preseason game, the team practices in their home stadium in front of fans. As many times as I’d watched the Panthers play live, I had never been inside of the luxury suites of the stadium. I was lucky to be given seats under those suites, so I got to walk through them to sit down. It was very different from the beer-stained cement and open air walkways of the outer bowl of Bank of America Stadium that I have scaled up and down for over a decade.
Inside the suites are countless photo homages to former and current Panther greats: Wesley Walls, Steve Smith, Julius Peppers, Luke Kuechly, and current players like DJ Moore and Christian McCaffery. These pictures were huge and there were dozens on each wall. However, there were no pictures that featured Newton. There was a shot of a lineman before a snap with Newton out of focus in the background and a canvas of McCaffery celebrating a touchdown by jumping into Newton’s arms, which was the only part of his body that you could see. But no photos starring Newton and, trust me, there were plenty to choose from.
This is only a small example of efforts the organization had made to distance itself from Newton. Efforts they hadn’t made for Ron Rivera, the head coach during Newton’s time there who was fired by the Panthers before being hired in Washington. Or Steve Smith, the best receiver the team ever had, who was released unceremoniously, similarly to Newton, and signed with Baltimore thereafter.
The reason for this is the same as the reason the team let Newton go in the first place, his combination of the physical and intestinal tools it takes to be a good quarterback was a recipe that is so strong and so sweet, that if they couldn’t have the best of it, they didn’t want it at all.
This was a popular stance that many agreed with. Newton was no longer the best he could possibly be. The only problem with that was, the best he could possibly be was as good as anyone could possibly be. Despite his apparent dropoff, Newton is a historically great football player as I’ve detailed in a previous blog post. But this isn’t about that.
When Newton suited up this past Sunday, mere days after the reunion took place, he reminded so many (not me, I never forgot) that his combination is a recipe as secret and as rare as that of the Krabby Patty. Even off numerous injuries in the past years, multiple months as a free agent, and only “two touchdowns worth” of familiarity with the playbook; he scored twice in short red zone situations, where he’s better than anyone ever.
The Panthers and Newton are back together. This time will almost certainly not be like their glory days in the early to mid-2010s, but in some ways, it’s better. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and what in reality was a season and a half, felt like so much longer to a fanbase without a leader and a leader without security. There’s a renewed sense of purpose, identity, and pride in Carolina and the presence of a figure who is just as gifted on the inside as he is on the outside is the reason for that.
For me personally, it's a dream come true. Newton has been a fixture in my athletic consciousness for as long as I’ve taken sports seriously. Growing up being a black quarterback, there was a point in my life where the sacrilege was being brushed upon. However, as I’ve grown up, I’ve seen he’s a man just as I am and my loyalty to him, though reminiscent of my younger days, was no longer as fruitful as it had been.
That was until now. I’m back as well, Cam.
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