For much of Caylin Newton's formative years, he has been known as "Cam's little brother."
It was a moniker that followed him throughout his childhood as his famous brother, 10 years his senior, excelled on the football field -- first winning the Heisman Trophy and BCS national championship at Auburn in 2010, then becoming the No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick in 2011, to becoming rookie of the year that same season and NFL MVP in 2015, when he led the Carolina Panthers to the Super Bowl. It stuck with Caylin Newton through high school and his recruiting process, and it followed him to Howard University, where he enrolled as a freshman back in January.
Caylin Newton is trying to change that -- though he may never truly escape it -- through his play as the Bison's starting quarterback, making a name for himself while quarterbacking a resurgent program in Washington D.C. that won a combined eight games the previous three seasons.
"I think I used to think about being in his shadow, but now it's like I really don't care what people think," Caylin Newton told AL.com. "I can't really worry about what people are going to call me. I know who I am. I know my title as Caylin Newton, so a person coming up to me and saying, 'Oh, you're Cam Newton's little brother,' it doesn't faze me any more like it used to. I'm just trying to find my own identity, and I've found it."
Caylin Newton has led Howard to a 7-3 record overall, including the biggest point-spread upset in college history Week 1 against UNLV. Winners of five straight games, Howard is 6-1 in the Mideastern Athletic Conference headed into its regular season finale, only a year removed from a 2-9 record.
He has been a big reason for that turnaround under first-year coach Mike London and first-year offensive coordinator Brennan Marion, a former record-setting receiver at Tulsa under Gus Malzahn.
Running an incarnation of Malzahn's offense, Caylin Newton has been one of the most productive players in the FCS this season. He ranks 14th among all players in total offense and is first among freshmen, averaging 290 yards per game. Newton is averaging 217.3 passing yards per game while completing 50.22 percent of his passes, throwing 13 touchdowns and running in 11 more.
"The biggest thing with him is just that he's fearless," Marion said. "He's a competitor. He has heart, and the kid is just like, when Saturday comes around, he comes alive. He loves being out there. He's not afraid of anybody. He's not in awe out there. He's not trying to be anybody's friend.
"He has the competitive edge, and that's really what takes him to the next level as far as his play. He kind of has the same confidence like his older brother has that, 'I'm out here and I'm going to make it happen.'"
There's a reason Caylin's confidence is reminiscent of his older brother's. Growing up, Caylin always looked up to his older brother, and despite the gap in their ages, a sibling rivalry always persisted and Cam pushed his little brother to be better.
"It was competitive always," Caylin Newton said. "Even when he was 18 and I was 8 and playing basketball, I would usually try to hang around with him. It was a big difference. You still had a close relationship, but it was almost like I was the only child for quite some time when he went off and my oldest brother was already gone.... To this day, we just have a really close relationship. I'm grateful."
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Caylin never had the hype about him his big brother had.
Cam Newton was a five-star prospect coming out of high school in Atlanta when he first signed with Florida in 2007. He was the nation's top junior college quarterback when he arrived at Auburn in 2010. While Caylin Newton put up gaudy numbers (3,322 passing yards and 33 touchdowns, 1,036 rushing yards and 13 scores) at one of the highest levels of prep football in Georgia as a senior, that same buzz didn't follow him.
Cam had something his little brother didn't -- size. While the now-Carolina Panthers star was 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, Caylin was just 5-foot-11 and 195 pounds. It's part of the reason he was just a three-star recruit and why no major FBS programs pursued him as a quarterback.
"We're in the day and age of potential," said Marion, who recruited Caylin Newton to Kentucky Christian before both wound up at Howard. "Everybody's all about social media and potential. If there's a 6-6 kid out there and he's not as good, they're going to go with the 6-6 kid because he could potentially be better. Sometimes if you see something, it's true. Sometimes if you see a good player, he's just a good player."
In Caylin Newton, Marion and London saw just that: a player who was capable of taking charge of an offense and executing at a high level despite not having some of the physical attributes of other more highly recruited players. He chose Howard, which he described in August as his Auburn, as a "leap of faith" because they embraced him as more than just a famous last name.
Caylin Newton on Howard: 'This is my Auburn'
Marion likened the younger Newton's under-the-radar recruitment to that of Oklahoma quarterback and Heisman favorite Baker Mayfield, who began his career as a walk-on at Texas Tech after receiving scholarship offers from only three programs: Rice, FAU and New Mexico.
"You want a quarterback who can take charge of any offense he's running, because at the end of the day, the quarterback is the team, whether it's little league, high school or the NFL," Marion said. "The quarterback is the team, and you want a guy that you can trust out there that can just take over. He has the ability to take over, and I think that's what people fear... That's one of the things that you see on his film. You can see him taking over."
He has done that plenty of times as a freshman for the Bison.
Caylin Newton scored the winning touchdown in a Week 1 upset of UNLV, when he ran in from 4 yards out to take a 43-40 lead over the Rebels midway through the fourth quarter. Last weekend against Norfolk State, he scored from 2 yards out with 5 seconds left on the clock to give the Bison a 28-24 come-from-behind victory at home for the team's fifth straight win. Against Florida A&M the week prior, he had a career-high 294 yards and three passing touchdowns to go with 141 rushing yards and another score in 37-26 Bison win.
"Failure wasn't in mind," Newton said. "Personal goals and as a team, we didn't plan on going 0-1 or 0-2 or having a losing season at all. The success part is not a surprise, but I mean, it's just real life.... It's just a blessing."
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All Caylin Newton could see in Las Vegas was stars and the field in front of him.
Howard pulled off a historic upset, toppling 45-point favorite UNLV, 43-40 on the opening week of the season. That was the night Marion knew he had something special in Newton who made his first collegiate start.
Less than 2 minutes into the game, Newton put Howard ahead with a 52-yard touchdown run for the night's opening score. It was impressive, surely, but it wasn't the moment Marion knew his quarterback was the real deal; the Bison offensive coordinator knew, based on the play design, that if Newton pulled the ball on that exact call, he would have a chance to score.
The moment came on the final play of the first quarter, when a play broke down and Caylin Newton took off downfield, flattening a UNLV linebacker near midfield before running for another 20-plus yards and getting down to the UNLV 25-yard line before being taken down out of bounds.
"That's when I knew, alright, this dude's a little bit different," Marion said. "He's a little bit different from everybody else out here."
Newton, who arrived in January with goals of starting as a freshman, knew he had to show a certain level of consistency in his first start or risk losing his job. Midway through the third quarter, UNLV took a 12-point lead and Newton, realizing the opportunity was slipping away, knew he had to mature on the field immediately and "fight through the giant, quite literally."
He orchestrated a 14-play, 75-yard touchdown drive late in the third quarter and put Howard ahead by three with a 2-point conversion after a quick touchdown drive early in the fourth quarter. After the Rebels briefly retook the lead, Newton scored what proved to be the game-winning touchdown with a 4-yard run midway through the fourth.
He finished the game with 140 passing yards and a touchdown on 15-of-26 passing and another 190 yards rushing and two touchdowns on 21 carries.
"He's only going to get better because he rises to the people around him," Marion said. "... We're not stacked with everybody's All-Americans around him. It's not like he took over the job at Clemson. He took over a job at a program that's been losing and down and out for a while. He's only going to get better, because a quarterback gets better with the people around him."
In the days that followed the win, Caylin received a congratulatory text message from Malzahn, who he has known since his brother's time at Auburn in 2010, and was inundated with interview requests -- from ESPN to The Washington Post and everywhere in between. The hype was "crazy" and something Caylin said he would have never imagined.
Then, of course, there was the congratulatory FaceTime call from his big brother during Howard's flight back from Las Vegas. The day after Howard's historic upset, Cam Newton said during a Carolina Panthers press conference that his brother's performance didn't surprise him. He just wanted people to stop referring to him as "Cam's little brother" and call him by his own name.
With his freshman season winding down, Caylin Newton feels he has "absolutely" done his part to make a name for himself.
"It's really about how I feel about myself," he said. "I couldn't care less about how people look at me. If I make myself proud, make my family proud, man, I wouldn't care (what others think). Of course, I would like my name to be my name and not somebody else's brother."
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
from Auburn Sports Impact http://bit.ly/2iTswTi
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