Cam Newton peels back curtain on meetings with Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick’s Monday morning meetings are infamous. The New England Patriots enter the session with the knowledge that — win or lose — they’re likely to face sharp and unrelenting criticism for their performance in the previous week. Belichick always finds something (and often many things) wrong with his team’s performance.

For a quarterback, particularly one who didn’t play well in the game, that might be tough. But Cam Newton is embracing the challenge.

“He is very intuitive. At the end of the day, you just have to grow to love it and understand it,” Newton said Monday morning on an appearance on the “Greg Hill Show” on WEEI. “And that doesn’t necessarily make me nervous. I actually look forward to those meetings, because I do know one thing about coach Belichick is, he’s going to be 100 as 100 is. So you not taking the right steps to you not making a great play on this play — just not getting the job done. … The same Bill Belichick that you knew is the same Bill Belichick that I know. It’s just something that you have to love and respect out of him.”

There was some speculation that Newton wouldn’t excel with the Patriots — and that he and Belichick would be a good fit for each other. That, of course, has proven false.

“I’ve been laughing a lot in my entire career about ‘who Cam Newton really is.’ And that’s just the honest truth. Here I am in year 10 trying to explain the person and the player that I am,” Newton said. “It’s just, at some times, disrespectful, because you don’t question certain quarterbacks. You don’t have to question Russell Wilson. You don’t have to question Tom Brady. And I hate to name drop there. But it’s just gotten to that point. Obviously, me being the new face and obviously, people are trying to find and dig through certain things. They don’t necessarily know that I’m the ultimate professional.”