Cam Newton and Ron Rivera stood beside each other for 9 years. Now they must battle
For nine years, just as the opening bars of the national anthem played before a Carolina Panther game, I would glance down to the sideline to find Cam Newton and Ron Rivera.
Newton was easier to locate, because he’s a bigger man and was wearing his No. 1 jersey. Rivera would be directly to the quarterback’s left. Early in his Carolina career, Newton had decided to stand next to his head coach each week during the anthem.
Rivera hadn’t asked him to do so, but he was touched by the gesture and its power. Here they were, coach and quarterback, Riverboat Ron and Superman, standing together before going off to battle once again.
The two of them did that nearly every Sunday from 2011-19, ever since Rivera drafted Newton with the No. 1 overall pick in 2011. It was comforting to see them there each week under the broad stripes and bright stars, because it meant Carolina had a chance to do something newsworthy.
Of the 76 games Rivera won in Carolina — the most by any coach in Panther history — Newton started 68 of them. They were practically linked at the hip.
The two men will stand for the national anthem again Sunday at Bank of America Stadium, but this time from 60 yards away on opposite sidelines, about to face off against each other for the first time in a regular-season NFL game.
Rivera will be wearing Washington burgundy, shepherding the opposing team. It will be his first trip coaching as a visitor in Bank of America Stadium since Panthers owner David Tepper fired Rivera with four games left in 2019. And Newton, after a 20-month break from the Panthers, is suddenly back as the home team’s quarterback once again.
“It’s kind of a cool situation for him to come back into it,” Rivera said of Newton, who was unemployed for about two months after New England released him.
That it is. And it’s cool for Rivera, too.
Rivera was the most popular coach in Panther history. Newton was one of the team’s most popular players. If you’re watching this one on TV, you’re going to see a whole lot of Newton and Rivera — these types of storylines are catnip to TV networks and sportswriters.
Newton, for his part, is trying not to make Sunday all about him and his former coach.
“It was great,” Newton said of his time with Rivera. “There’s a respect. But we’re trying to get to 1-0 (this week) by any means. … I refuse for the narrative to be about two people when it’s about 106 people.”
With that 106 number, Newton was referring to the 53 players on Washington’s and Carolina’s active rosters.
Rivera won’t only be hugging Newton’s neck in the pregame. Some of his former players remain in prominent roles on the team, like Christian McCaffrey, Shaq Thompson, DJ Moore and Donte Jackson.
The Riveras sold their house in Charlotte, but warm memories of the city remain. Rivera said he still had so many friends in Charlotte that he didn’t want to name any of them for fear of leaving someone out. He and his wife, Stephanie, plan a trip to the Queen City in the spring so they can more properly visit. Rivera also remains on good terms with Panthers owner Dave Tepper, despite the fact Tepper fired him in December 2019.
“There was nothing he did then that could be contrived as (anything but) business,” Rivera said of Tepper. “I mean, I understood that. ... He told me, ‘Ron, it’s not personal.’ So I had no issue with that.”
Ron Rivera’s classy goodbye
When he got fired, Rivera asked Tepper if he could do a final press conference the next day to thank his players and the city of Charlotte.
Tepper agreed, and that press conference became one of the best I ever attended, with Rivera even coming prepared with props. He had one T-shirt printed up that said “Missed Opportunities” — he would lament those after every loss, enough so that it became a running joke in the media corps. The other T-shirt said: “Thank You.”
It was the classiest coaching goodbye in Panther history. Rivera moved on quickly and got hired at Washington, where he directed his team into the playoffs in his first season. Matt Rhule got the head job in Charlotte in 2020, and he’s trying to figure out a way to get Carolina into the playoffs this year (Newton’s surprise signing was a big part of that). While Rhule and Rivera are friendly with each other, they don’t know each other well and have never had an extensive conversation.
Washington and Carolina also played each other late in 2020, but that was a road game for Carolina with no fans in the stands. The Panthers won, 20-13, but lost some draft position in the process.
Before the game, the Panthers wore “Rivera Strong” sweatshirts as a tribute to Rivera’s fight against cancer.
“I thought that was very big of them,” Rivera said. “I really appreciated that.”
This time Carolina (5-5) comes in as a slight favorite over Washington (3-6). But Rivera knows Newton as a quarterback better than anyone and understands everything the 32-year-old QB can still do. He recognized some of the plays Carolina ran last week with Newton in a limited role as ones his Panthers’ teams had run before.
Did Cam ever come close to joining WFT?
It was long rumored that Newton would join Rivera in Washington, both after Carolina released him in March 2020 and after New England let him go Aug. 31, 2021. Rivera said in our interview it was closer to happening the first time, but never reached the point of Washington seriously pursuing it.
When I asked him if he had ever considered Newton joining Washingon, Rivera said:“Yes. I’ll answer that. But again, I’m not trying to recruit or anything like that. I don’t want to get in trouble with the league … There was an opportunity here (in 2020). ... (But) having Dwayne Haskins here last year, there’s no way I could have had a strong personality like (Newton) here with a guy like Dwayne. I wanted to give Dwayne every opportunity. ... Having Cam here would have been tough on the young man. So that’s probably the biggest thing that slowed me down more so than anything else.”
That didn’t work out, though, as Rivera ended up releasing Haskins outright in late 2020 after some poor play and a couple of COVID-19 protocol violations. Rivera is now rolling at QB with Taylor Heinicke, who started a game for Rivera in Carolina in 2018 and is now 3-5 as Washington’s starter, including an excellent performance last week in an upset win over defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay.
The Panthers haven’t played well at home this season, going 0-3 in their last three games in Charlotte. Newton spoke this week about “reclaiming” the stadium for the Panthers, which too often has been filled with thousands of fans for the other team. He said Thursday he wanted to “bring the pride back.”
Rivera, when asked what sort of reception he expected Sunday, said: “I expect Panther fans to be Panther fans.”
And as for the game itself, pitting QB and coach against each other for the first time after nine seasons of battles together?
Said Rivera: “It’s gonna make for a hell of a game.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
