Thats cool, watch this: How the Panthers pulled off one of their most fun moments in recent

June 15, 2024

Things seem a little doom-and-gloom around Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton right now, and that feels seriously unnatural considering how much damn fun Newton has when he plays football.

Take one famous, viral moment from 2017, for example. It was Week 15, the Panthers were at home against Green Bay, they had the ball and they were driving behind the tandem of Newton and then-rookie running back Christian McCaffrey.

McCaffrey, who finished with 60 yards and a touchdown on this particular drive, caught a 9-yard pass on third-and-2 — his fourth in a row. After a brief timeout, former longtime running back Jonathan Stewart then got Carolina to the Packers’ 7-yard line with a 2-yard carry.

Then, as the Panthers offense and Green Bay defense began to align on second down and the play clock ticked away, former Packers star linebacker Clay Matthews lined up as an edge-rusher, saw something he recognized and shouted a warning to a teammate to defend McCaffrey, who would surely run a wheel route as the Panthers continued to target him in space.

Or so Matthews thought.

What follows is a re-telling in the players’ own words of one of the most fun moments in recent Panthers history — and one that is fitting to revisit ahead of this week’s matchup between Carolina (5-3) and Green Bay (7-2).

“You’ve been watching film, huh? That’s cool …

“Watch this.”

It was Dec. 17, 2017. The Packers were 7-6, while Newton and the Panthers were 9-4 and aiming for a playoff berth. Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers had broken his collar bone earlier that season and returned too early after surgery to try to push his own team into the playoffs.

On that Panthers’ opening drive, McCaffrey had just converted a third down by getting open on the outside, and Matthews saw a look that would — he thought — get McCaffrey to the outside once again. McCaffrey ranked second in the NFL in running back receptions leading into the week and had four receiving touchdowns. Plus, the Packers had seen plenty of wheel routes on tape from the Panthers, and specifically Newton and McCaffrey, in Weeks 2, 3 and 10 that season. So it was definitely coming, right?

Right?

Wrong. Matthews saw the correct alignment and knew the ball would go to McCaffrey, but a part of Newton’s game plan was to re-arrange the signals for the route. What Matthews thought would be a wheel route was instead a Texas route.

Christian McCaffrey: “Cam’s a guy who changes his signals every week. He’s got different signals for different routes.”

Head coach Ron Rivera: “We just felt we would run a stick route, (they) would overplay it and that we would have an opportunity to get the ball to Christian for the touchdown.”

McCaffrey: “I lined up next to (Cam) and you hear Clay, Clay was the back-side defensive end and he’s screaming over toward the linebacker who was covering me, Blake Martinez, former teammate of mine.”

Michael Palardy (the Panthers’ punter, who was on the sideline watching, as the team got in field-goal range): “I just remember there being a pause. I don’t know why, because I can’t hear anything. There was a pause in the play, and I saw Cam do something — point, talk — I didn’t know what was going on until after the game.”

McCaffrey: “Clay is screaming, ‘Watch the wheel route! Watch the wheel route!’ And as soon as he said that — and I knew I was running the Texas route — I looked at Cam, and he’s talking to Clay!”

Newton was smiling, that thousand-megawatt grin that some players likened to that of Bruce the shark in “Finding Nemo” — that, “I know something you don’t know, and I’m going to eat you alive” grin.

Palardy: “That camera angle of his face, right? Just that grin, smirk to himself like, ‘You think you know, but you don’t … and I know something you don’t know.’ That smile. That was like really cool to see.”

Newton grinned at Matthews, who was screaming out the wheel route in warning for Martinez to cover.

“Oh, you’ve been watching film, huh?” he said.

“That’s cool. Watch this!”

McCaffrey: “In my head, it was weird, I could feel just kind of a non-verbal communication between me and Cam, and I knew it was going to be a touchdown as soon as I heard (Clay say) ‘wheel route’.”

Rivera: “It just goes back to sometimes when you’re game-planning, things just fall right into place. And you say, ‘Hey, if this happens, this is what we want to do.’ And sure enough, there it was.”

Tight end Greg Olsen’s own route on the play helped seal the open space for McCaffrey, as it cluttered things up for Martinez, who realized the play would not be a wheel a half-second too late.

The FOX call: “Fifteenth play of the drive … Newton … finds him! McCaffrey, touchdown! What a drive for the rookie! … Kind of a natural pick there by (tight end) Greg Olsen, he releases up the field and the guy covering Christian McCaffrey out of the backfield on that H-post route, he couldn’t come down and cover it. Easy touchdown.”

McCaffrey: “I didn’t want to make it too obvious that we knew something they didn’t know. Blake, who was covering me, ran immediately to try to get an angle on the wheel route and we ran right under him … I knew as soon as Cam threw it that it was going to be a touchdown. We ran back to the sideline and just started laughing. It was pretty funny.”

Rivera: “Oh, it was hilarious. It was one of those moments — that’s a football moment.”

Palardy: “That’s Cam. Just thinking on the fly, being able to do that — being that cerebral — to be able to do that is pretty remarkable.”

Luke Kuechly: “I just remember he ran a route, and that route is hard as a linebacker — and obviously it’s Christian, so that makes it super hard. I mean, Clay was on to the right thing. He had the right formation, the right call. Fortunately for us, they switched it that week.”

Rivera: “(Clay) was right in that, yeah, we were gonna get the ball to Christian, but now you’ve got to be able to cover him. You have to figure out where he’s going.”

Kuechly: “That’s the part that stinks on defense. You think you’re right sometimes, and then they can change it. Clay was right! But sometimes even if you’re right, you can be wrong.”

Will Grier (now a backup quarterback in Carolina, Grier, a Charlotte native and Panthers fan, was watching the play on his phone): “That stuff that happens probably more than you’d think, but I mean me and a lot of other people would internalize it and just like focus on the play. The fact that he called it out was pretty funny. I am SO glad he said that out loud. Because I internalize stuff like that. The fact that he said that out loud was great, it was beautiful.”

The play now reminds Rivera of a similar moment he experienced as the defensive coordinator of the then-San Diego Chargers.

Rivera: “We were playing the Giants in New York, and I was with Norv (Turner). I think it was a Sunday night game. We were in a two-minute drill and trying to hurry downfield. And (quarterback) Philip Rivers read that they were in two-man. Somebody said something to Philip, and Philip turned to Darren Sproles, and he says ‘Sprolesey! We got ’em now!‘ Because he saw the coverage. … All it was, it was the same situation. The linebacker had to cover Darren Sproles, and Darren Sproles shook him. Sometimes things just come together. And believe me, it happens a lot more than I think people realize. Because when you line up and see exactly what you’ve been working on, exactly what you saw on tape, it’s like hitting a ‘grapefruit’ in baseball. When you see the pitch coming, you know what the pitch is and you get a chance to hit it.”

The Panthers ended up winning the game, 31-24. The mic’d up clip went viral on social media. The following Wednesday, Rivera walked into his press conference wearing a shirt that said, ‘You been watching film, huh? That’s cool, watch this!” next to a picture of Newton, in support of the quarterback’s fun moment. The shirt, like the moment, went viral.

Greg Van Roten: “We had the T-shirts made after that, so that was pretty cool. I still have that shirt. I pulled the clip up and showed my friends. So it was just a funny thing that was overheard — usually you don’t hear that kind of stuff. So it was cool that they captured it, and it was a touchdown.”

Kuechly: “I thought it was cool. Yeah, I mean we scored and I was pumped. But I do feel for (Clay) because there have been times where I think I’m right, then they run the play and I wasn’t right. (Laughing) I’m on his side. He was right, but it just didn’t work out.”

Grier: “I just know in Cam’s mind, when he called that out he just got really happy … I thought it was beautiful.”

McCaffrey: “That could not have gone better, as far as how the whole picture was painted. That was a fun play to be a part of.”

Ron’s shirt: “you been watching film, huh? Watch this!” pic.twitter.com/fwkw8gOqwZ

— Jourdan Rodrigue (@JourdanRodrigue) December 27, 2017

(Photo of Newton and McCaffrey: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)

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