Cam Newton may not be an active NFL quarterback at the moment, but he’s a business, man.
The Carolina Panthers great joined fellow free-agent passer Robert Griffin III on Thursday’s episode of RG3 and The Ones. After chopping it up about being better than at least 32 other quarterbacks in the league, Griffin asked Newton what it’d take to get him back on an NFL contract.
What followed was an insightful and pretty heartwarming reflection from the 34-year-old.
“You not ’bout to sit up here and penny-pinch me, bro,” Newton said. “I’m not ’bout to sit up here and sign no $5.5 million deal, bro. Those days are over with. I’ll be wastin’ my time. I have seven beautiful children that I love takin’ to football practice, tennis practice, cheerin’ practice and all that. To get me up out takin’ them on a day-to-day basis, takin’ them to school—those are some of the things that you have to consider. And if the call doesn’t happen, still cool. I’m still straight. I have businesses and things like that that can feed that monster.
“But at the same time, when you’re not desperate, you know what I’m sayin’. Football has been good to me, and I remember my father instilled this in me at a young age—said, ‘Son, you need to use the game of football. Don’t let the game of football use you.’ Because I will tell you—if you don’t think I could be on a roster right now, I could. But it’s bigger than that to me.”
“I never really wanted to play for nobody else but the Panthers. I went to New England—I learned so much from that whole organization from top to bottom with Robert Kraft and, obviously, Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels as well. But I wouldn’t change that for nothin’. I needed that for my overall growth as a human and business man. So seein’ that, it’s just somethin’ that I can honestly say I used the game of football. I’m healthy and that’s the only thing that I can just dwell on—just that gratitude in itself.”
Newton has already gone on record stating that he’d only sign another deal if the situation was right. He dove into a pair of wrong, or at least unfavorable, situations with the New England Patriots in 2020 and the Panthers in 2021—where he was used as a temporary fix on two extremely flawed and fluctuating rosters.
So when Griffin then asked Newton if he’d start under center for the New York Jets if they came calling, his answer made quite a bit of sense.
“I don’t wanna walk into a dysfunctional situation,” he replied. “Have you guys made Zach Wilson aware? Also, Aaron Rodgers is tryin’ to come back this year. Let’s also talk about that. So, when he comes back, is this gonna be somethin’ that you just say, ‘Aye, watch out.’ So, it’s a lot of things, I just don’t make impulse decisions. Like Jay-Z say, ‘I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”
And sorry, Panthers fans, we know that Jay-Z reference may have given you some sort of traumatic flashback to your team’s last head coach.
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