NFC Championship Game: Maverick Cam Newton ready to defy the laws of celebrity as Panthers face Cardinals

Super Bowl just one win away for NFL's biggest emerging star

(Getty Images)

Cam Newton talks a very sharp game. He drives his opponents crazy with the way he celebrates – even first downs – and with his trademark dab dance (apparently suggested by his younger brother) when he scores a touchdown. But if you’re the best quarterback in the land you can get away with it.

Newton’s talents will be on display when his Carolina Panthers take on the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC title game, with the prize a berth in the Super Bowl. Nostalgia means that the public focus, inevitably, will be on the other game – which could feature the last contest between Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the defining quarterbacks of their generation, in the AFC championship decider between Brady’s New England Patriots and Manning’s Denver Broncos. But they are nearly 40. The quarterback of the future will probably be on view in the match-up between the Panthers and the Cardinals: a 26-year-old who can do it all.

In his college days, Newton had his off-field troubles: a suspension for buying a stolen computer at the University of Florida and unproven suspicions of a cash-for-recruitment scheme at Auburn University in Alabama, where he won the Heisman Trophy for best college football player.

But those spots of juvenile bother have been surpassed by his later achievements. The overall top pick in the 2011 NFL draft, Newton made an instant mark with the Panthers and was the first rookie to throw 4,000 yards in a season and break a rushing record at the same time. In 2013 and 2014 he led Carolina to the play-offs, and this year to a near-perfect 15-1 regular season.

Newton’s armoury is complete. He can throw and rush with equal facility and in 2015 became the first quarterback to have 30 throwing and 10 rushing touchdowns in a season (his total was 45, split 35-10). He has ever-improving poise in the pocket, and at 6ft 6in and 260lb (more than 18 stone) he’s a hard man to stop.

Newton is asking questions about some longstanding NFL traditions. Today almost 75 per cent of players on NFL rosters are African-American, but that proportion drops precipitously when it comes to quarterback, the single most important position in any team sport. Of the League’s 32 franchises only seven had a black starting quarterback in 2015, down from a high of nine in 2013.

Admittedly, that number is better than it once was. Between 1933 and 1946, the NFL had an unofficial ban on black players. The first black quarterback was drafted in 1968 – but Marlin Briscoe played only that single season for Denver before being benched and traded.

Since then some notable African-American quarterbacks have graced the League: among them Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham, Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick. Only two, however, have won the Super Bowl: Doug Williams with the Washington Redskins in 1988, and Russell Wilson’s Seattle Seahawks in 2014.

Few would bet against Cameron Newton one day joining them. But the suspicion of racial prejudice lingers. Why the relative dearth of black quarterbacks and black head coaches (currently just six among the 32 teams)? Many would blame it on widespread ingrained paternalism: when it comes to leadership positions, whites are, well, just more suited.

These half-buried attitudes intersect with sensitive matters of etiquette. Newton is no shrinking violet, and nor are most NFL players. Neither, for that matter, is the League itself. But a different, albeit unspoken, set of rules applies to quarterbacks. They, above all, are the public face of the NFL; they must behave like gentlemen, with dignity and decorum, on the field of play as well as off it.

Newton has never exactly fitted that mould. When he was drafted, a football writer complained: “He always knows where the cameras are and plays to them.” He had “an enormous ego with a sense of entitlement that continually invites trouble and makes him believe he is above the law, and does not command respect from team-mates”. He was, the critic witheringly concluded, “only a one-year producer”.

That last judgement of course, was utterly wrong. But the earlier comments echo still. The League tut-tuts over his antics, and the players of the Tennessee Titans went after Newton when he did his dance routine after a touchdown during a 27-10 Panthers’ regular season win.

To which Newton swiftly retorted: “If you don’t like it, don’t let me in the end zone.”