



CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The quarterback had to learn to forget about losing and this was the hardest thing to do. Cam Newton might have been the first pick of the 2011 NFL draft, the man who was going to redefine what playing quarterback was all about, but he had hardly been a starting quarterback for much of his adult life before he was handed the Carolina Panthers.

There was the year he won the junior college championship at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, and the season he played at Auburn, where he won the national title and the Heisman Trophy. But what did that teach Newton about the NFL, where not every game ends in joy?

"Don't forget this feeling, know how it feels," Panthers offensive coordinator Mike Shula used to tell Newton those dark afternoons of the quarterback's first two NFL seasons.

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But also learn to forget.

The coach had to learn to forget about losing and this was the hardest thing to do. Ron Rivera had never been a head coach when he came to the Panthers and helped make Newton the first pick of the 2011 draft. He coached less to win and more not to lose, and when he failed to win as much as he hoped, the wretched feeling he had not done enough settled in his stomach.





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Just how much became clear this spring when he prepared a video to show the players how single plays had cost them several games last season. He noticed a handful of fourth-and-short situations where he decided to do the safe thing and kick a field goal or punt rather than go for something more. He knew then he was going to have to change as a coach, taking a regular risk few men in his position dare to make.

"I have come to feel that in this league you can't kick too many field goals and expect to win football games," Rivera said Wednesday as he sat on a stool in a hallway of Bank of America Stadium.

And yet near the end of the season's second game at Buffalo, he failed to heed his advice, taking a field goal on a fourth-and-1 from the 21-yard line. It gave the Panthers a six-point lead and the Bills stormed down the field to score the game-winning touchdown. The knowledge he had disregarded his own new edict and lost tore at him.

If only he can learn to forget.

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They were thrown together in a forced marriage of coach and franchise quarterback before either understood the frenzy of their jobs. Newton rose to be Rookie of the Year despite a month of practice for his role as Panthers quarterback, then he fell. He struggled. He sulked. Rivera was a promising new head coach then he grew too hesitant to try something.