Ron Rivera and Cam Newton once upon a time made a great team. So good, in fact, that the quarterback of the Carolina Panthers won MVP and took his team to the Super Bowl.
Years later, Rivera is now the former coach of the Washington Commanders and Newton is ... whatever he is. Wearing outlandish outfits and squawking about everything under the Sun alongside Stephen A. Smith on ESPN.
Newton stirred up controversy this month when he looked back on his days with the Panthers. Appearing on Travis Hunter's podcast, Newton said “I went into a locker room of losers. Just honest. Guys didn’t know how to win; guys didn’t know how to prepare. They didn’t take themselves serious to realize we was 2-14. There was a lot of 2-14 in the mentality of those guys."
Ouch.
The Panthers went 6-10 in the first year of the Rivera-Newton combo, and 12-4 the following year. By 2015, the Panthers went 15-1 and were in the Super Bowl, where they lost to the Broncos.
Rivera, who was fired by the Commanders after 2023 and replaced by Dan Quinn who led the team to this year's NFC Championship, seemed to mesh with Newton during their time together in Carolina. But now?
"Sometimes things are better left unsaid," Rivera said. "And I’d loved to have seen him be a little more diplomatic. Just because a lot of those guys on that 2010 team became some of those guys that went to the Super Bowl in 2015. It’s unfortunate he made the comments and now he’s just gotta live with them and own up."
Newton has addressed the comments, but stood by them, saying on his own podcast, "When did we become so sensitive? When did we become so sensitive to really speaking what the reality is? A locker room full of losers? Aggressive, but it’s true.”
