A fight between Cam Newton and Josh Norman fueled Carolina Panthers’ 2015 ascent
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Super Men: The inside story of the 2015 Carolina Panthers
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On Aug. 10, 2015, at the end of another grueling Carolina Panthers training camp practice, cornerback Josh Norman was tired. Tired of being disrespected. Tired of quarterbacks thinking they could throw the ball on him with impunity.
“I was tired of being hunted,” Norman says now. “It was time to be the hunter.”
So when Norman intercepted star quarterback Cam Newton’s pass in a drill and began running toward the opposite goal line, he decided to trash-talk Newton.
Norman also pointed a finger at Newton, mocking him.
“The Cam that a lot of people do see is he’s smiling, he’s joking, he’s jovial,” safety Kurt Coleman says. “But he does not like to be made fun of.”
“And then,” linebacker Luke Kuechly says, “it was like, ‘Game on.’”
The ensuing fight between Newton and Norman remains an indelible Panthers memory from 2015 — an impassioned milestone during the most breathtaking season in franchise history.
But that fight was just one unforgettable moment in a year that remains exceptional for all it contained. A dabbing quarterback and a dancing home stadium. A Seattle miracle and a Tennessee mom. A house fire and a baseball bat. A Thanksgiving feast in Dallas and an NFC Championship in Charlotte.
Ten years later, The Charlotte Observer is telling the story of that season in a way it has never been told before. This four-part series and the accompanying video documentary is based on exclusive interviews with dozens of Panthers players, coaches and many others closely associated with the most successful season in the team’s history.
The Panthers won 14 games in a row to begin the season, rolled into the Super Bowl with a 17-1 overall record and then suffered an upset loss to the Denver Broncos.
How did it happen? Who made it happen? Why did the team lose the Super Bowl?
To answer those questions, you have to start not in 2015, but in early 2011, when the team that would eventually become a national phenomenon was marking time as an NFL punching bag.
Empty stadiums, fed-up fans
In 2010, the Panthers were horrible. A team quarterbacked mostly by rookie Jimmy Clausen stumbled to a 2-14 record and finished dead last in the league in points scored. Coach John Fox was fired after nine seasons.
Then in January 2011, Ron Rivera, a former linebacker for the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears in the 1980s and a respected defensive coordinator, was hired as the team’s new coach. In April, Newton was selected out of Auburn with the No. 1 overall pick.
In July, the Panthers picked up a third critical piece, trading a third-round pick to Chicago for tight end Greg Olsen.
Still, the Panthers had an uphill climb to rebuild a fan base that had soured on the team following the 2-14 debacle.
“The word ‘Carolina’ really had no significance in the NFL,” says Pat McCrory, the governor of North Carolina during the 2015 Super Bowl run.
Courtney Rivera, the daughter of head coach Ron Rivera and the Panthers’ social media coordinator for much of the 2010s, remembers the first game she went to in 2011 at Bank of America Stadium.
“I’m sitting with Mom,” she says. “We’re getting ready for the game … and I’m kind of looking around the stadium. And I look at Mom like, ‘Did we not sell tickets to this game? Where is everyone?’”
Cam Newton does it his way
Rivera started Newton at quarterback from Day 1, but they had to survive a lot of early bruises together.
The 2011 Panthers were still only 6-10. In addition to developing a reputation as a fearless athlete, Newton also was regarded by some as a sore loser. At one point, Rivera approached Newton in the early 2010s after the quarterback had “gotten into one of his moods.”
“And I start saying, ‘Dude, what the hell? Enough’s enough, OK?’” Rivera recalls. “‘Why you gotta be like this? ... Why can’t you be like —’”
Rivera paused, unsure of how to say it.
“Like Tom Brady?” Newton interrupted. “Drew Brees? Aaron Rodgers? Coach, I can’t. I gotta do it my way. I’ll never be like them.”
Newton then pointed to his skin.
“I’m a Black quarterback in this league,” he said, “and I don’t want to change who I am.”
In a league that was majority Black, the quarterback position was majority white. High-profile players like Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb were notable exceptions, but Newton was firmly in the minority at his position. He was also the first Black quarterback to start for more than one season for the Panthers.
From that day forward, Rivera gave Newton more freedom — to lead loudly, to make mistakes and to celebrate his team’s successes in very public ways. Newton’s “Superman” touchdown celebration had come with him from Auburn.
It took a little while to get used to — “That was kind of different for us to see that. That wasn’t the Southern way,” McCrory says, chuckling — but Panthers fans soon embraced it. The quarterback eventually would add various other end zone dances and liven up every practice with a constant stream of trash talk and playfulness.
A Kuechly quandary
In the 2012 NFL Draft, the Panthers loved linebacker Luke Kuechly from Boston College. But they also loved a safety from Alabama named Mark Barron.
And while Newton was a “slam dunk” to be picked No. 1 overall in 2011 in the final weeks before the draft, Kuechly was far from that at No. 9 in 2012. According to then-assistant general manager Brandon Beane, the Panthers considered Barron and Kuechly to be equal players.
“We had similar grades on those guys,” says Beane, now the Buffalo Bills’ general manager. “And that would have been an interesting debate if Mark was still there.”
Instead, Tampa Bay took Barron — who played eight years in the NFL but never made a Pro Bowl with the No. 7 pick. That ended the Panthers’ dilemma, and they chose Kuechly at No. 9.
Unlike Newton, Kuechly didn’t look the part of an NFL star at first glance.
Says Jordan Gross, an offensive tackle with the Panthers when Kuechly was drafted: “Just not a real intimidating looking guy. … Average-sized white guy back there, playing linebacker. ... Kind of dorky-looking, with the curly hair and the glasses.”
Captain America and Riverboat Ron
Kuechly immediately showed a genius for diagnosing plays before they happened and solidified Carolina’s defense right away. By 2013, he was the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, and had also quickly earned a “Captain America” nickname for his on- and off-field behavior.
“He was the best defensive player I ever got to play with, as far as linebackers are concerned, and the nicest human being you’d ever meet,” safety Roman Harper says. “... I stayed in the same building with Luke — me and my family. And if he ever saw us, like, getting out of the car, he’s like, ‘Can I help with groceries? Can I carry a baby?’”
Also in 2013, Rivera picked up his “Riverboat Ron” moniker as he began to gamble more on fourth down. Carolina went 12-4 that season before losing its first playoff game. By then, Newton was several years into the “Sunday giveaway” concept, when he would hand the touchdown footballs to a child.
The team gradually began to take on some of Newton’s exuberant personality, too, becoming more demonstrative.
Says Steven Drummond, the Panthers’ director of communications in 2015: “When we drafted Cam, as an organization, we were very conservative ... from the music we played to how we expected fans to act on game day. … You weren’t allowed to take your shirt off in the stadium. So then you bring Cam in, and he was the ultimate disruptor to all that, you know? The music changed. If you looked in the stands, the fan base became more diverse.”
In 2014, the Panthers dropped to 7-8-1. At one point, they were 3-8-1 and hadn’t won a game for two months, but they revamped the offense on the fly, won a weak NFC South with a four-game win streak and then earned a playoff victory against Arizona, too.
Two days after that game, on Jan. 5, 2015, the Riveras woke up in their home and smelled smoke.
Their house was on fire.
‘They saved our wedding album’
Rivera had several family members visiting over the weekend, and they had made a fire in the fireplace while watching NFL playoff games.
“These guys (firefighters) are running in and they’re putting tarps over everything,” Rivera says, choking up at the memory. “And it’s great that they did that, because they saved our wedding album.”
The Rivera family would need to move out while their home was being rebuilt. (Improper installation of the modular fireplace was later determined to be the cause of a fire that injured no one but caused more than $500,000 in damage.) Coincidentally, Gross — by then retired and working for the team’s radio broadcast crew — was in the process of moving to the house next door in his own neighborhood. The former Pro Bowl offensive tackle offered to rent out his original home to the Riveras.
The following weekend, the Panthers lost in the playoffs to the same Seattle team they could never beat in the early 2010s, ending their 2014 season.
But over the months that followed, Gross would become an unofficial sounding board for Rivera, as the two visited in the evenings, sometimes drinking wine, often talking about football. About, among other things, how the Panthers were headed into training camp in the summer of 2015 with some question marks as well as a strong — and strong-willed — roster.
Cam Newton, Josh Norman and ‘The Fight’
The Panthers kicked off the 2015 season with a public, family-friendly, joy-filled display of unity.
On Aug. 7, in front of a record crowd at Bank of America Stadium during its annual Fan Fest, the team put on a fun-filled dress rehearsal with 6-year-old cancer survivor Braylon Beam dancing on the field and roaming the sidelines as the team’s coach for the day via the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
But three days later, at Wofford College in Spartanburg, the temperature on the field was in the high 80s — and the players’ temperatures also were rising.
“I think it really started with the trash talk, first and foremost,” linebacker Thomas Davis says.
Davis and Newton razzed each other constantly in practice. Newton purposely celebrated offensive touchdowns in practice with at least as much vigor as he did on Sunday afternoons in front of 70,000 fans.
“Cam is one of those guys who can piss somebody off just by smiling at ’em,” Panthers center Ryan Kalil says.
Norman also liked to get involved in the trash talk and was intent on earning the respect he felt was overdue.
Drafted in the fifth round out of Coastal Carolina in 2012, Norman had already experienced numerous ups and downs by 2015. He had become a rookie starter, later been benched for weeks after a blown assignment, and then slowly worked his way out of the doghouse. As camp started, Norman was still a lesser-known player compared to many of Carolina’s stars. In his mind, however, he was ready to have a breakout year.
“I felt I was the best player on the field,” Norman says. “When I touched the grass, it was my kingdom.”
Says Norman of Newton: “He had this moxie about him to where he says, ‘All right, this is me. It’s who I am.’ Superman, right? ... I saw it, I understood what it was, you know, respected it for what it was. But I don’t bow down to no man.”
“I had my own bag that I carried,” Norman says, “and it had a whole bunch of rocks in it.” The rocks weren’t real, of course. They were, as Norman says, “all these things that people said I couldn’t do.”
So when Norman intercepted Newton that day, two things happened. Newton chased the play like he was going to make a tackle — a no-no for quarterbacks in all practice drills. Norman, in turn, ignored the fact that Newton was wearing a red jersey, meaning he wasn’t supposed to hit or get hit.
Norman yelled at Newton, though, and said, “What’s all that chirping about now?” Then he pointed at the quarterback.
Angrily, Newton tried to grab Norman. He got stiff-armed, and the fight began.
Says Jonathan Stewart, the Panthers’ starting running back: “Every year you have fights and you need to get the aggression out. … Guys ain’t seen their girlfriends in however long and you’re sleeping in a dorm bed and it’s hot. … That fight was none of that. You know?
“It was like, ‘I’m him.’ And I know you think you’re him, too.”
Newton, five inches taller and 45 pounds heavier, grabbed Norman and tried to throw him to the ground. Norman was able to rip off Newton’s helmet in the fracas. That meant Newton’s face was front and center in some of the photos taken by Charlotte Observer photographer David T. Foster III that were soon beamed around the world.
“I remember seeing one photo of Cam standing over Josh with just a picture-perfect smile,” says long snapper J.J. Jansen, the only Panther on the current roster who also played in 2015.
“We started tussling,” Norman says, “and man, the next thing you know, the whole offense came and just ram-shafted me into oblivion. I think that’s why I slipped down. And so I tried to take his helmet and just literally drag him down with me and hip-toss him.”
Stewart grabbed Newton, trying to pull him away.
“I just remember pulling Cam with all my might,” says Stewart. “I’m a pretty big dude. … So I pulled him back as hard as I could. And I just remember it didn’t really work.”
The players were eventually pulled apart without any punches being thrown, as the coaches hustled over.
“And of course, Ron has to separate everybody,” Kuechly says of Rivera. “He’s got to say: ‘Don’t hit the quarterback.’ But Ron secretly loves it.”
What ‘brought everybody together’
Rivera admits that he did “love it” — he thought a burst of intensity would do the team good. But he also needed to make sure everyone knew that literally fighting your teammates wasn’t OK. Before the coach could start making a long speech, though, Kalil, Davis, Kuechly, Olsen and defensive end Charles Johnson came to him.
“We got this,” they said. “We’ll take care of it.”
Along with general manager Dave Gettleman, Rivera mostly let the players handle the fallout. Says Gettleman: “When you have a team that’s self-regulating, that’s worth its weight in gold.”
Within hours, Newton and Norman had shaken hands, posed for a photo together that Newton posted on social media, and tried to downplay the scuffle. During a press conference later that week, Newton said: “I think we’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
Ten years later, though, many Panthers believe that the fight was extremely significant because it was a bonding agent. They don’t think it’s a coincidence, either, that both Newton and Norman ended up having the best individual seasons of their respective careers.
Says linebacker Shaq Thompson, a rookie in 2015: “When Cam and Josh had got into it on the sideline at practice … I think that moment is what really brought everybody together.”
Kelvin Benjamin goes down
Nine days after the fight, the Panthers were holding a joint practice in Spartanburg with the Miami Dolphins.
Coming off a 1,000-yard, nine-touchdown season as a rookie, receiver Kelvin Benjamin was considered Carolina’s best wideout. Although he sometimes had problems keeping weight off, he had shown up in terrific shape.
But while running a route, Benjamin fell to the ground without being touched and let loose a blood-curdling scream. Trainers hurried toward him as Benjamin writhed in pain.
“There’s players, and then there’s your top guys,” fullback Mike Tolbert says. “And Kelvin was definitely one of our top guys. And sometimes if a player gets hurt, he rolls an ankle or something, it’s, ‘All right, let’s move the drill down and keep going.’ That one stopped practice for a solid 30, 40 minutes.”
Benjamin had torn his anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, and would miss the entire 2015 season. It appeared to be a devastating blow. His teammates were crushed — and as the news spread, so were Carolina fans.
Says Zack Luttrell, the founder of the Roaring Riot Panthers fan club: “No disrespect to the other wide receivers, but when your No. 1 wide receiver goes down before the season even starts ... it felt like, ‘Here we go again.’ You know, ‘We can’t have nice things,’ basically.”
It’s fair to say that no one expected what came next.
Part 2 | The Upstarts
Heroes rose — and flipped — as the Panthers streaked through first half of 2015.
This story was originally published July 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
