It's one thing to provide an opponent's players bulletin board material ahead of a battle. It's quite another to give an entire city a rallying cry.
Whether it was his intention or not, Cameron Jerrell Newton fired what will be perceived as a shot across the bow of Seahawks fans, in advance of the Carolina Panthers' tilt in Seattle.
"I can't say (CenturyLink) Stadium is the loudest that we've ever heard before because we've played in some loud places," Newton said Wednesday, via the Charlotte Observer. "I'm not trying to disrespect them, nor disrespect any other place because loud is loud.
"When it's third-and-4 in the fourth quarter with three minutes left and you've got to get a first down, I like to put Bank of America (Stadium) up against anybody in the nation, in the world."
No offense to the lovely people of Charlotte, but Newton's comparison -- and blatant pandering to the locals -- probably wouldn't hold water in a straw poll of fans outside of Bank of America Stadium on a Panthers game day.
Last season the Panthers traveled to Seattle for a playoff matchup with the eventual NFC Champions. Before eventually succumbing to a blowout, Carolina "scared Seattle a little bit," as Ron Rivera put it earlier this month. ("We Scared Seattle A Little Bit -- 2014 Carolina Panthers" needs to be on a t-shirt.) Newton pointed to that game as reason he's not worried about the noise.
"You would think going into a stadium of this magnitude, they call themselves the 12th Man, that it alters the approach," said Newton, who is 0-4 in his career vs. the Seahawks. "It does to a degree. But yet going back and looking at the statistics last year we had one false start, they had a false start as well."
Something tells me that the 67,000-plus fans in attendance on Sunday will not take kindly to Newton's assessment. Whether he's right or he's wrong, the quarterback just gave the 12s another excuse to scream and shout.
