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The Carolina Panthers will host the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday afternoon in the first game of NFL Wild Card Weekend, and before the game, a franchise legend will look to get the crowd in Charlotte going. 

The team announced on Wednesday that Cam Newton was indeed going to be hitting the "Keep Pounding" drum on Saturday, fulfilling the wishes of Panthers fans after apparently thawing an icy relationship between the franchise and its greatest quarterback. 

Newton hasn't been back to a Panthers game since retiring after the 2021-22 season when he signed with the Panthers midseason and started five games. In the four years since, Newton hasn't been on the best terms with the franchise, highlighting in 2024 that he wasn't invited to be part of the team's trip to Germany like other franchise legends. 

"Did it hurt my feelings? Yeah, it did," Newton said on his '4th&1' podcast in 2024. "As a man, I'm like, damn bro, I gave this city everything."

However, with the team playing their first home playoff game in a decade -- and making their first trip to the postseason in general since the 2017-18 season -- Newton is a fitting selection to fire up the crowd. That 2015-16 season was the pinnacle of the Newton era, as he won NFL MVP honors at the peak of his powers and took the Panthers to the Super Bowl. While they lost there to the Broncos, the 2016 NFC Championship Game in Charlotte saw Newton lead Carolina to a 49-15 win that remains the franchise's high point. 

This year's Panthers team enters Saturday's game with the Rams in a very different place than Newton's 2015 squad. Carolina went 8-9 and limped into the postseason thanks to a Falcons win over the Saints. The Panthers went 1-3 in their last four, finishing in a three-way tie for the division title that Carolina held the tiebreaker. As a result, Carolina is a 10.5-point underdog to the Rams in the Wild Card round, which would be make them the largest home underdog in the Super Bowl era. 

That means they'll have to pull off one of the all-time playoff upsets on Saturday to advance, and they will be bringing out all the stops to get the vibe right on Saturday, including Newton's return to Charlotte.