Since this is my flagship post, I should introduce myself. My name is Vincent Morgado, and I am a born-and-raised Raider fan. I have been watching, talking and playing football since I was old enough to go to games and my family had season tickets until my senior year of high school. I don't have any formal education, I have never coached, I simply have watched and loved football since I was very young, and have always loved discussing and analyzing the game.
Here's why - This is the blog for ALL fans. This is not the Patriots/ AFC North Sports Network. This is not the Dallas Cowboys Sports Network. I don't have to satisfy ratings and advertisers. This is also for fans of losing teams. You guys who suffer through 5-11 seasons and keep the faith, and never hear about your boys come Monday or Tuesday morning. I won't say this will be "Come Cry With Me" because as I said this is meant for ALL fans. I will do my best to show love to every team and I will do my best to keep my personal biases away from any of my predictions and all of my analysis.
Just to give you a feel for what kind of story will catch my attention, I want to do a quick piece on Cincinnati QB Carson Palmer, and I'm leading with this - Are you stupid?
I have a few major problems with what Carson Palmer is doing, both from a professional standpoint and a character standpoint.
From the professional standpoint, who is he to threaten anyone with retirement? This isn't the Carson Palmer of '05 or '06 when he was throwing for 4000 yards, 30 touchdowns and 13 interceptions with a 65% completion percentage. This is the post-injury Palmer of '09 and '10 who is averaging 3400 yards, 23 touchdowns, a 60% completion percentage and who had 20 picks last year, not to mention has been widely regarded as having lost his nerve and maybe even a good portion of his judgement skills as a quarterback. All it takes is a look at the Tampa Bay game last year when he threw two interceptions in the last TWO MINUTES of the game AT HOME. He threw pick-sixes from Week 1 all the way to Week 14, demonstrating consistently poor judgment except for a few select games. In all seriousness, Carson Palmer is not a franchise player anymore. Before the injury? Absolutely. Guy was a baller in the elite tier of NFL quarterbacks. No longer. It's time for Palmer to realize he isn't the same player as he was before and stop making demands. He isn't going to get them, and is only giving NFL management more reason to distrust someone who might already be on the downslope of his career at a relatively young 31 years.
That leads me to my second problem with this - the character question. Why would a general manager running a franchise in turmoil like the 49ers or Panthers, or maybe even the Jaguars who may be looking to move on from David Garrard, take a chance on a quarterback who might not be much of an improvement in the SHORT run, much less the long run. I know that a franchise quarterback is the best cornerstone of a team, even more so than a dynamic running back or a top 10 defense, but how many quarterbacks have abandoned the team that drafted them and RESURRECTED a franchise? As Geoffrey Rush said once, "That's a gamble of long odds." The next question a GM has to ask himself is "Do I have the pieces around to make this trade WORTH MAKING?" Would you, as said GM, really trade away the requisite pick (probably a 1st or 2nd rounder) for a guy who has thrown 53 picks in his last 3 full seasons? Why not simply use the pick(s) to draft your own QB and get a weapon to help him or a lineman to protect him? The Raiders have been searching for a franchise QB for almost a decade at this point, and even with our history of acquiring cast-offs and malcontents I WOULD. NOT. WANT. THIS. GUY. Palmer is saying with this series of actions that he wants to WIN. The problem is all the teams with a legitimate shot at winning have a franchise quarterback already.
I think this situation speaks more to (And I think most Bengals fans would agree with what I'm about to say) the pile of putrid refuse that is the Mike Brown administration. Instead of dealing Chad Johnson at the height of his marketability when Washington offered them a 1st rounder in 2008 and 2009, they kept another malcontent who has since turned into a one-man circus show and has never re-created his early-to-mid 2000s level of dominance. Now, they are going to hide behind principle and let Carson Palmer walk on the game instead of doing whatever they can to get some REAL VALUE for what really is a player decreasing in value every time he opens his mouth.
Palmer should have approached Mike Brown and the Bengals administration behind the scenes ONLY, and Mike Brown should do the intelligent thing and just do what he says. Palmer has the power here because he's right: He has 80 million in the bank, he doesn't have to play anymore and he doesn't have to deal with the Bengals if he doesn't want to - and he CLEARLY doesn't want to.
