Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Is Carson Palmer Going To Retire?


After a dismal 2010 campaign with the Cincinnati Bengals, QB Carson Palmer has had enough. Earlier this offseason Palmer was extremely candid when he voiced his desire to be traded and was adamant that he would retire rather than suit up for the Bengals ever again. Palmer cited the $80 Million he's been paid since being the number 1 overall choice in the 2003 draft after winning the Heisman at USC.

Regardless of the CBA situation Bengals owner Mike Brown responded to the Palmer situation earlier this week saying that he was not going to trade Palmer no matter what. So the question is where does this leave Palmer and the Bengals? Cincinnati have a severely disappointing season last year after winning the AFC North in 2009 and adding WR Terrell Owens. Palmer's play seemed to decline considerably last year as his interception numbers skyrocketed.

The logical thing to do in this situation in my mind (and likely in head coach Marvin Lewis' mind) would be to ship Palmer off as soon as the labor situation is resolved and draft a QB of the future in the first or second round in late April. The problem here lies with Mike Brown who is known to be overly involved with the football operations of his team despite not having the highest football IQ in the business. One only needs to review some of the coaching meetings from Hard Knocks 2 years ago to see that the "suggestions" he made to his coaching staff were pretty much ridiculous. If Brown wants to play hardball with Palmer he may leave his team handicapped without a QB.

I truly think that Carson Palmer is serious about retiring if he can't land somewhere else. At worst he would find himself in a situation similar to Brett Favre when he retired from the Packers but wanted to go to the Vikings.

No comments:

Post a Comment