Cam Newton has been giving Bryce Young advice. Here are 3 things I hope Cam tells him

They were both No. 1 overall NFL Draft picks, and Heisman Trophy winners from SEC schools, and quarterbacks who came to Charlotte with the weight of a franchise upon them.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that Bryce Young and Cam Newton have struck up a friendship as Young prepares for his second NFL season after what was a nasty first one. Despite some obvious differences in their body type and decibel level, the two men have a great deal of similarities, too.

“I know what you’re going through,” Newton told Young, on-camera, just before he interviewed Young at the ESPYs earlier this month. “I’ve been where you are.”

On Tuesday, just after Young and the Panthers’ other veteran players reported for training camp, the quarterback said this was only one of several conversations he and Newton have had.

“We’ve talked multiple times,” Young said, “and I’m grateful. ... He’s done great things here. So I’ve tried to pick his brain about some things, and I’m grateful for his support. I’m grateful for him obviously still caring so much about the organization, about the city.”

As for the advice Cam has given Bryce? I’ve got some ideas on what it should be, which we’ll get to later. But what Young shared on Tuesday, at least, was pretty much what you would expect. Keep your head down. Keep grinding. Block out the naysayers. Be where your feet are.

Young didn’t use the phrase “Keep Pounding” when saying all this, but that’s basically what he meant.

Still, the person this advice was coming from: that’s notable.

Newton was the flamboyant, fantastic, phantasmagorical toast of Charlotte for many years. Then he got older and just couldn’t play the same way anymore.

Newton left the Panthers, he returned, he left again — it was all still noisy, but the results were no longer there. Newton went 0-13 in his final 13 starts with the Panthers and there were some rough spots in the relationship toward the end, on and off the field.

But Newton also won the NFL Most Valuable Player award in 2015 with the Panthers and deserved it. He is a giant compared to Young, both in terms of his towering build and with what he has accomplished in the league so far. Newton has a lot of knowledge he could impart, if he chooses to impart it, and the fact that he is talking to Young can only be viewed as a positive.

“He’s made himself available to me,” Young said.

Newton has had an unusual post-football career so far. Rather than work as a TV studio analyst for one of the major networks — surely something that would be available to him — he has chosen to do it his own way, with his own YouTube video podcast. He will say some outrageous stuff on the show, which is called “4th and 1,” and also some normal stuff. Newton said at one point that if the 2023 NFL Draft was held again, most teams would select C.J. Stroud over Young (undeniably true).

Still only 35 years old, Newton now has had a few high-profile roles on TV — at the NFL Draft and at the ESPYs. Newton also said to Young at the ESPYs that he understood the “frustration and even yearning for success” in Charlotte, but also that “everything great takes time. Rome was not built in one day.”

In terms of personality, the two are polar opposites.

Young, who turns 23 later this week, is placid and relatively quiet. Newton is excitable and extremely loud. To imagine Young getting in a fight with a cornerback who just intercepted him at training camp, as Newton did with Josh Norman before the Super Bowl season of 2015, is nearly impossible to fathom.

But they both work extremely hard and they’re very familiar with the exact same job. Newton was the Panthers’ No. 1 QB for longer than anyone else in franchise history. He’s got a lot that he could tell Young. And besides the obvious football stuff, which Young understands pretty well anyway, here are three things I hope Newton will tell Young:

(1) Loosen up a little. There’s obviously a personality in there somewhere with Young. Show more of it.

(2) Come up with your own touchdown celebration. Make it unique. Include teammates and fans. Have some fun with it.

(3) Improvise. For all this stuff about getting the ball out in 2.7 seconds or less and learning the intricacies of a new system, there has to be some room for spontaneity. The Carolina offense at least has enough playmakers this year that it won’t set Young up to so obviously fail, as the 2-15 Panthers did last year. But Young has to do his part and show more of the creativity that he did at Alabama.

Certainly, Young’s relationship with new coach Dave Canales and his offensive teammates will make the biggest difference as to whether the Panthers can score with any regularity this season.

But a dose of Superman?

That’s sure not going to hurt.