Panthers' Caleb Farley leaned on God, NC hometown when times were hard. 'Now he's home.'

NEWTON, N.C. — Caleb was always moving, Elijah Farley began. Running. That’s what he did. Ran always. Still is busy running, in sports and whatnot. This is a kid who had energy. You know what I mean? Wasn’t still. He stayed busy. He was real slim in the waist now —

Oh God, a longtime customer chimed in. He used to be skinny!

Oh yes, Elijah Farley replied. But when he was a kid, he’d take the ball, and you just knew he was gonna score. He gon’ score! Fascinating to watch. If you wanted to elevate him, you would just say he’s a Michael Vick out there on that football field. Caleb also —

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Picture this scene at 10 a.m. Wednesday, and just know this captured Elijah “Chunk” Farley in his element. He was leaning in a cushy chair at the front of Superior Barber Styling Center in Newton, N.C., just down the road from his hometown of Maiden. He wore thin-rimmed glasses and blue jeans.

He also wore a big smile. It was easy to understand why.

Caleb Farley, Elijah’s nephew, signed with the Carolina Panthers two weeks ago. The kid with unending energy as a 6-year-old is a 25-year-old pro. And now, the 2021 first-round pick is on the practice squad of the NFL team in his home state. Caleb is now an hour away from the family and friends and community he grew up with; an hour away from the barbershop that raised him, originally run by his father, Robert, and his uncle, Elijah — who to this day remembers Caleb bouncing around those linoleum floors as he quietly wondered to himself: How far can this kid from this 4,000-person town go?

“He’s home now,” Elijah said.

“Oh yeah,” another customer chimed in.

“If he ever gets to be out there on that field, you’re going to see hundreds of Farleys and friends and people down there,” Elijah said. “We definitely will have a tailgate, and it’s going to be a whole bunch of us. Whole Maiden’s probably gonna come. They know what he and his Daddy mean to Maiden and the surrounding areas. They know.”

Everyone from Maiden knows the triumphs, certainly. They saw those first-hand. Take Caleb’s days as a rec-league Mountainview Mountaineer, running from sideline-to-sideline, frustrating his peers and opposing coaches alike. Take his days as quarterback of Maiden High School, where as a senior he threw for 20 touchdowns and ran for 38 more, where Duke recruited him as a quarterback and Virginia Tech recruited him as an athlete and VT ultimately won.

Take his days in college, where he switched positions and recorded two interceptions his first game as a cornerback and played like a nation-best talent thereafter, showing a potential that eventually propelled him to be a first-round draft pick in 2021. Take all his days after that — where he takes every chance he gets to come home, including for youth football camps that attract kids across North Carolina and inspire kids from small-town Maiden with big-time dreams.

All those were wins.

Maiden, of course, also knows the losses. The community saw and felt those firsthand, too. Losses as in the injuries at Virginia Tech and thereafter, yes, but also the unimaginable ones. His mother, Robin, died of breast cancer in 2018, just after he graduated high school. And his father, Robert, passed away in August 2023 after an explosion in his Mooresville home.

“Maiden gave him a lot,” Elijah said.

His hometown gave Caleb love and family, faith and strength.

“So he tries to give to Maiden,” Elijah added.

He then paused, reached for a chair cloth and called over his first customer of the day.

“But he’s just like his father,” Elijah said. “He’d help anybody.”

Caleb Farley’s family and faith extended beyond his home

Ask Zay Huff what Caleb Farley being a Carolina Panther means to their hometown, and Huff will smile and take you back to a familiar scene.

Maybe it’s a Friday night, after a football game, and he and Caleb are outside in the Farley’s backyard pool. They’re turning anything and everything into a competition. Diving contest? Yep. Freestyle race? Sure.

Or maybe it’s a summer day, and Huff and Farley are heading to the football field, the place that has bonded them forever. Huff was Maiden High School’s leading running back and receiver; Farley was the quarterback.

Or maybe Huff and Caleb are begging Robin Farley to take them to Gepetto’s Pizza. Or to get Little Caesars delivery. Anywhere they can each eat themselves into a food coma as high school boys like to do.

“They were really just my second family,” Huff said.

Huff called Robin “the sweetest soul you would ever meet.” And he considered Robert his father, a man who provided something that, “coming from a single-parent household with just my mom, I’d never had before. But knowing what I was missing in my life, Robert — I don’t even know if he knew he was providing these things for me. But just simple life lessons and talks that I’m sure Caleb probably heard a million times but were new to me. It all just resonated with me. He held me to a high standard.”

Huff added: “And if I stay over, I’m going to church.”

Ask around, and all of what Huff said mirrors what everyone else has always said of the Farleys.

For one, they were remarkably close: from Caleb, to his older brother Joshua, to their parents.

For another, they were loving and known in the community. When Robin passed, almost all of Caleb’s high school class attended the funeral, Huff recalled. When Robert passed — so tragically unexpected — almost the entire town gathered at his barber shop, and they exchanged stories as they always had within the shop’s walls. Robert wasn’t just a shutdown and speedy safety on the 1971 Maiden championship team. He wasn’t just a wizard with a clipper, either. He was “a counselor,” people said. It wasn’t uncommon for him to talk through a problem with a customer from a haircut’s start to finish — and then follow him out to the parking lot to hear more about what his troubled friend was going through.

And finally, the Farleys unflinchingly believed in God.

That, along with community love, helped Caleb through his toughest times, friends said.

“Really in college is when he started really talking about his faith and opening up more about it,” said Will Byrne, the Maiden High football coach who coached Caleb for four years. “Especially during difficult times and things like that. He didn’t show it as much. We just knew.”

Said Huff: “Speaking to his faith, he was unwavering that. That whole moment (of his father passing) spoke to his faith. I tried to be there, however I could be, but he’s such a strong individual that he stomached it really well. He leaned on the Lord, which is all he could do.”

A full-circle moment with the Panthers

Two weeks ago, Farley was the newest member of the Panthers’ practice squad. He stood in front of his locker. He wore a necklace locket over his heart with a picture of his mother on the left and his father on the right.

He was asked about football, of course, and he responded dutifully. He answered to the injuries that have burdened his NFL life. He’d played in just 12 games over three seasons with the Tennessee Titans, the team that drafted him 22nd overall. He missed the entirety of 2023 due to a back injury that carried over from the previous year. He also tore an ACL in 2021.

But he was also asked about his homecoming of sorts. About what it meant to be a Panther to him but also to his family and community. He appreciated the question — “They just want to see me succeed,” he said of the Maiden love — but didn’t want to make the moment too big. He’s here to work, he said, and to prove himself.

He did offer one story, though.

“When I came in for my workout, on the T-shirt was No. 31,” he said. “And y’all might not know, but that was my father’s number all through high school.”

Farley wears 31 at practice now. It’s his number.

It connects him with Robert, the attentive father. It connects him with Maiden, the supportive hometown. It connects him with God, who Caleb says made all of this possible. It connects him with his uncle, Elijah, and all the people in the barber shop and beyond who are rooting for him, too.

When Elijah first got the text from Caleb that he was signing with the Panthers, Caleb eventually told him the story of how he got to wear No. 31. Elijah remembers his response.

“You home now,” he said. “You home.”