More than 800 players will shine a light on their favorite causes over the next three weeks by wearing custom-designed cleats — something Cam Newton has been doing since his second NFL season.

Newton’s pregame tradition was not borne necessarily of bringing attention to his charitable foundation, but as a way to get his swag on before games. It turns out the Panthers quarterback started a trend.

With the NFL relaxing its rules on acceptable footwear the past few years, more players have followed Newton’s lead in getting creative with the messages, artwork and self-expression they put on their cleats.

“I see guys like Odell (Beckham Jr.). I see guys like A.B. (Antonio Brown). I see numerous guys who have a strong cleat game. It’s funny, I remember I used to get fined for doing it. And I still would do it,” Newton said.

“And now — I’m not saying I started it, I put everybody on this — I look around the league and I see guys that’s doing things that inspire me.”

The league’s three-year-old “My Cause, My Cleats” campaign begins this week and continues through Week 15, when 20 Panthers’ players will wear kicks for a good cause for their Monday night game against New Orleans. Newton’s again will highlight his foundation, which benefits youth in Charlotte and his Atlanta hometown through a variety of educational and wellness initiatives.

The festive-colored, size-14 Under Armour cleats feature the logo of Newton’s foundation and will arrive from a studio in Maryland, where a pair of artists collaborate with Under Armour’s marketing team to come up with cool designs — with little or no input from the guy wearing them.

“It’s gotten to the point now where Under Armour just sends it and I wear it. They know I’m not scared to wear anything. If it fits good, I’m gonna wear it,” Newton said, laughing. “But it also gives a different element to the game that’s not mentioned a lot — self-expression, fashion, swagger, whatever.”

But Newton’s “cleat game” had more humble beginnings after the Panthers drafted the former Auburn star No. 1 overall in 2011.

“It really stemmed from him because he always kind of wanted to feel a certain level of swag before the game,” said Kendall Ogle, Under Armour’s sports marketing director for NFL players.

“Before we didn’t customize them. We just sent him our loudest cleats,” added Ogle, a former Maryland and NFL linebacker. “So whatever cleat that had the loudest colors and some of the things that weren’t considered a team color, we would send them to him and he would wear them for pregame just to get himself going.”

The NFL’s uniform police weren’t as forgiving in 2011 as they are now, hence Newton’s fines — which had not been previously reported — in the early days for wearing cleats the Panthers had not declared as their dominant footwear color.

Under Armour didn’t start customizing Newton’s cleats until his second season. Ogle doesn’t remember what was featured on Newton’s first pair of customs, but says there have been some common threads over the past seven years.

“Typically, the theme always tries to have something to do with the team they’re playing and the city that they’re playing in. Sometimes they are personal,” Ogle said.

Three days after Newton’s son, Chosen, was born on Christmas Eve in 2015, Newton wore a pair of blue cleats with white polka dots during warmups with the message, “It’s a boy” emblazoned on the straps.

Newton has also paid homage to Auburn, Atlanta, Superman, Halloween, cowboys and his MVP season of 2015, which he commemorated by wearing a pair of gold cleats featuring his stats before Super Bowl 50 against Denver.

Newton, who’s not afraid to make bold, gameday fashion statements, views his custom cleats as another palette on which to show off his creative side.

“For so long football has been a masked sport and people don’t realize who (players) really are outside of when they take the helmet off. Now you’ve got biiiiigggg personalities up under the hood,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury, like a soccer player, like a basketball player or people that don’t wear things that are covering their face. So you’ve gotta make a splash while you can. And when I see other influential guys (doing the same) around the league, my hat goes off to ‘em.”

Under Armour’s cleats are manufactured in China, which, until this year, is where the finishing touches were applied to Newton’s custom cleats, as well.

But the Baltimore-based company now has two artists in Laurel, Md. — David Zambrano and Mohammed Gafar — handle Newton’s shoes. The two also do the cleats for Falcons receivers Julio Jones and Mohamed Sanu and Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette, and have projects for Steph Curry, Tom Brady and Panthers receiver Torrey Smith.

Both say they appreciate the creative freedom Newton gives them.

“Cam being a fashionable guy, I think that’s an exciting part, as well,” Gafar said. “We try to make sure we meet his expectations, in a sense. He has high expectations for his fashion.”

What used to be a six-to-eight week process when the cleats were coming from China now takes less than a week.

Gafar (Twitter: @kreativecustom1) and Zambrano (@dezcustomz) receive the specs from Under Armour and generally need a day or two to complete Newton’s cleats. The two artists, who alternate each week on Newton’s cleats, first scuff up the leather before airbrushing or hand-painting the cleats, then apply a couple coats of protectant.

These are not computer-enhanced images.

“If you zoom in on the pictures,” Zambrano said, “you can see the brush strokes.”

Once finished, they ship the cleats overnight to Bank of America Stadium, where they’re delivered to Newton’s locker.

“He doesn’t know what he’s getting until he opens the box. He likes to be surprised every week with what he’s receiving,” Gafar said. “We have that much freedom, where we kind of can come up with the theme, the idea, the placement, the colors, everything. He really doesn’t have much input.

“We just wait for the response afterwards. But it seems like we knock it out the park each week.”

There have been a couple of snags.

When the NFL first rolled out the “My Cause, My Cleats” week in 2016, there was some confusion as to what was permissible on the shoes. Newton and Under Armour wanted to add his foundation logo to his cleats.

The only problem? Newton and the Panthers were in northern California, where they spent a week practicing between games at Oakland and Seattle.

Under Armour officials found an artist in California, mailed them the cleats and had him design them.

“Literally the designer had to hand-deliver the cleats to Cam at the hotel the day before,” Ogle said.

After Newton changes into his game shoes, the fate of the custom cleats varies. Newton will keep some in a pile in his locker, others he’ll wear the following week to practice or give some away to fans or his foundation.

(Players can auction their “My Cause, My Cleats” shoes at NFL.com/Auction to raise money for their selected causes.)

Newton, who wore a pair of “Creed”-inspired cleats last week before the Seattle game, says he likes that the league is getting better about allowing players’ personalities to shine through.

“For me that’s what it’s all about. It’s about expressing yourself in ways that it doesn’t take your mouth to even open,” he said. “You just know that certain things that you wear and certain things that you do from a celebration, people are gonna talk about it and they understand, like, ‘Oh, OK, what is it that he was feeling or why did he do that?’ And it just sparks a different conversation.”

Ogle, the Under Armour marketing rep, works with more than 100 players, including Fournette and Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson.

How does their cleat swag compare with Newton’s?

“Not even close.”

(Top image: Jeremy Brevard / USA Today)