Recipe for success: Carolina Panthers locker room puts personalities on parade

Ron Rivera has, for the past two Carolina Panthers victories and possibly more, told his team in the locker room following the wins to “keep your personality.”

Yes, the one-game-at-a-time mantra has and will always be Rivera’s favorite refrain, but this one is just as important.

What Rivera is telling his players: keep dancing during warmups at practice during the week, keep playing music in the locker room, keep mouthing the lyrics to an Adele hit song for an Instagram video, keep celebrating touchdowns and interceptions and never lose yourself.

“There’s a great saying: Respect your opponent but believe in yourself,” Rivera said Friday after Carolina’s 33-14 dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving. “If you start worrying too much about that side of things and doing things completely the right way, I think you lose that little edge. And I think that’s something that’s been good for us is keeping that edge.”

Obviously you need talent to be 11-0, but there probably wasn’t a bad locker room among the 11 other NFL teams that started 11-0 in league history.

The right atmosphere goes a long way. Not only do players want to come to work, but they want to come in early. The offensive linemen and tight ends want to have Fellowship Thursdays. The specialists want to have Bible study. The running backs want to sing.

“I’ll say it flat out. Are we the most talented team in the league? Absolutely not,” quarterback Cam Newton said more than a week ago. “But I pride myself in the ability to say we have the potential to be the best team in the league. That’s what it’s all about.

“There are a lot of individuals in this game that wish they had the mesh that the Carolina Panthers have in the locker room and being able to go out to practice and be able to go to each other’s events and share the same cause. So many guys do that here. This is a special thing we have going here and we have to do the proper things ... to keep us trending upward.”

Don’t hold Josh Norman down

Rivera points to cornerback Josh Norman as the best example of why he wants the team to keep its personality.

Norman came into the NFL as a fifth-round pick from Coastal Carolina. He was cocky, and that grew with a three-interception day in his first training camp in Spartanburg.

But he made rookie mistakes. And in 2013 he didn’t identify a switch late in a game against Buffalo and cost the team the victory. Norman went into Rivera’s doghouse, and he was almost broken.

“When Josh first got in, he was just as flamboyant as he was,” Rivera said, “and I think to a degree we tried to get him to fall in line too much, and he lost that personality – the bravado – as to who he is. And I think there is a little bit of bravado you should have out there.”

Now Norman is one of the best cornerbacks in the league and, after holding elite receiver Dez Bryant to one catch for 6 yards on plays in which they were matched up, he’s letting everyone know.

Newton, among the league leaders in touchdown celebration dances, has caught criticism his entire career – magnified in recent weeks – for his behavior. He’s done his Superman pose and hip-hop dances, and against the Cowboys he flipped the script in a masterful troll job by doing the Twist and the Swim.

Some outside of the building want Newton to stop. But if anyone inside the building does, no one knows of it.

When Newton tore down a Packers fan’s sign three weeks ago at Bank of America Stadium, more than a half-dozen of his teammates came out on Twitter expressing faux responsibility for the matter.

It was the Panthers’ “I Am Spartacus” moment.

“It’s mainly driven by (No.) 1,” said tight end Ed Dickson of the energy in the locker room. “He’s a big kid and he’s our leader. If he was to change in the next 24 hours and be serious, it would change everybody’s mentality. The fact that he’s so loose and has everybody having fun and we’re winning, we’re all on the same page.

“I think we’re doing it the best way. There’s no right way, but we’re doing it the best way.”

Dance like no one’s watching

Before each practice, college scouting assistant Jonathan Fields plugs an auxillary cord into his phone and plays two or three (edited) songs for the players to listen to as they warm up.

There’s usually a rap song or two along with a rock song. The majority of the rock songs come from Kings of Leon, a band tight end Greg Olsen has met a few times at concerts.

Newton, Ted Ginn Jr., Philly Brown and Mike Tolbert are four of the most active dancers on the team during warmups. Backup quarterback Derek Anderson is also active, in the sense that he knows he can’t dance but loves to do it anyway.

“These guys come out with the music going and they’re working on their dance moves during warmups, but that’s a good thing because they’re moving as we’re warming up, I guess,” Rivera quipped. “I’d much rather see that personality as to who they are. It’s something I picked up from being around Coach (Mike) Ditka. He kind of let us have our personalities shine.”

In the locker room Tolbert reigns as the unofficial DJ. He has a sound bar and a portable boombox that he sometimes takes to the steam room.

Tolbert plays whatever comes to his mind. Last week it was Nate Dogg and Warren G’s “Regulate,” and then Notorious B.I.G.’s “One More Chance” and, later, Ice Cube’s “Check Yourself.”

This was going on as 13-year veteran cornerback Charles Tillman asked to borrow Roman Harper’s hoverboard to go run an errand. The hoverboards – a two-wheeled, self-balancing scooter – have become incredibly popular in the locker rooms. Rivera likes them because he says they help save players’ legs.

Harper is probably the best “driver” on the team, navigating deftly around bags, teammates and media members.

“Oh, yours is fast!” Tillman exclaimed to Harper as he sped away last week.

The offensive linemen and tight ends get together on Thursdays on a normal game week and talk about anything and everything. One of the younger players gets food from Mortimer’s in the EpiCentre and, after practice, they go to a meeting room and have Fellowship Thursday.

They’ll put on that week’s highlight tape and talk football or politics or whatever comes to mind. Sometimes former tackle Jordan Gross, who now works for the team, will stop in, as will Rivera.

“You get to learn their stories, their background, where they came from, what makes them them,” second-year guard Trai Turner said. “It gives you a sense of comfortability and trust with those guys. You share with those guys and you’re like OK, I know a little bit more about this guy. I see why he acts the way he acts, what makes him who he is. It makes you want to play harder for that person because we have the same relationship. It’s a brotherhood.”

Changing personalities

For all the personalities on the team, the Panthers have gotten rid of a few, too.

Two of the largest personalities in team history are the franchise’s all-time leading receiver (Steve Smith) and all-time leading rusher (DeAngelo Williams), and the Panthers jettisoned them in consecutive offseasons.

Smith’s temper is notorious by now, but there are still plenty of Panthers who swear by him. He would have fun but never cut up like some of the younger players do now.

Could they be having this kind of fun with Smith at his locker? Could Newton joke and carry on with a receiving group that included Smith?

Those are questions the Panthers had in 2014 when they decided to shift the balance of power totally to Newton.

Williams was beloved, but his outsized personality would sometimes stunt others around him. Always a jokester, sometimes Williams’ cracks would land with a thud in the locker room.

“I think a lot of it is, the younger guys have stepped up,” Rivera said. “The guys that have been waiting in the wings for that opportunity to make it theirs, whether it be Luke or Cam. The emotional leadership going to Thomas Davis. And the do-right, do things the right way goes to Kalil.

“It’s just amazing how these guys have stepped into those roles and grasped those roles. The quiet leadership of Charles Johnson and the opinionated leadership of Greg Olsen. It’s a mix. They’re all different in their own ways, but they all lead by their own examples and I think that’s been good.”

A team in balance

Also gone from this year’s Panthers is a tension between the offense and defense that existed in 2013, when Carolina went 12-4.

Veteran defensive tackle Dwan Edwards said Friday that the defense felt a burden to produce more in 2013 as the offense struggled to score points. That year the Panthers were 18th in scoring offense while the defense was second behind Seattle.

This year the Panthers are averaging 30 points per game – second-best in the league – and have the No. 3 defense in the NFL.

“I just think we’re more of a team,” Edwards said. “We don’t have any bickering as far as we’re an offensive team, defensive team, offense is not doing this. I think earlier we might have had a little bit of that in 2013. This year I think we’re not concerned with what’s going on on offense. We’re going to play the way we play. We’re going to try to win the game however we have to. I think that’s a big difference between this year and the year before.”

Rivera said he didn’t sense any tension at the time but admitted he’s an optimist.

Looking back, he said he could see how – and why – that was the case.

The offense was still coming into its own under offensive coordinator Mike Shula, who was then in his first year on the job. And then there was the maturation of Newton, who has evolved into a trusted quarterback and is having fun while doing it.

“I’m thankful for an unbelievable team,” Newton said recently. “Everyone wants to point the finger and say, well, they’re winning because of this or they’re winning because of that. It’s so healthy to have a locker room that is care free of statistics, who is very selfless, relentless and care about each other more than themselves. …

“Over the years I’ve seen so many different locker rooms, and this is arguably the best. Not because of the talent, not because of the attitudes. It’s just moreso the approach. So much professionalism in that locker room, and it shows off come Sunday.”

This story was originally published November 28, 2015 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Recipe for success: Carolina Panthers locker room puts personalities on parade."