In reading about it, Palmer is apparently very familiar with Hue not only from Hue’s days in Cinci, but Hue was also the OC at USC when Palmer was there. On top of that Marvin Lewis is Hue Jackson’s best friend and they run similar offensive schemes (or so say the Oakland beat writers on twitter) so… Palmer might be starting Sunday.
I don’t know how I feel about any of this anymore. I am a mixture of excited that the Raiders are clearly all in, and terrified that this is all going to blow up right when things are looking good for the first time since 2002.
A cursory look at the 2012 NFL Draft entry on Wikipedia shows that, indeed, all Oakland has left is a fifth and a sixth. Maybe they could package those to pick up one of those crappy-but-fast CBs that always seems to pop up each year.
Going all-in for one season is defensible when you’re a good team with a realistic shot at winning it all. If the Saints or Chargers or Eagles or Ravens wanted to deal away a number-one pick to fill a position of need, that’s not a horrible idea: one more good player, right now, could make them into a champion.
The Raiders are not that team. They were 2-6 outside their division last year. Their 4-2 start has included four close wins, including by one score over Cleveland and Denver. One more good player, right now, maybe makes them 10-6 instead of 8-8. Mortgaging the future for a title run is one thing; doing it for a wild-card berth is stupid.
And you expect the team, including Palmer, to be better in 2013 than it is now? Why, precisely?
No, top picks are not gimmes; but historically speaking, two picks gave them about a 50/50 chance of drafting at least one Pro Bowl player. (1st round ~ 40%, 2nd round ~15%) Said player would be young, cheap, and presumably play at a position of need.
Long-term, QB, was not a position of need for them: Campbell is OK, 29, and not all that expensive. Pryor gave them a developmental guy. If they weren’t sold on Campbell, in the offseason they could have brought someone like Vince Young in as an affordable FA. Palmer is only marginally better than Campbell, is 32 with an injury history, and will cost shitloads more.
So in order to get a player that, long-term, they didn’t need, they greatly hampered their ability to fix their weaknesses.
If you ask Jerome Harrison to get you a 3rd and 1, he won’t stop until he’s actually gone around the earth so fast as to go back in time and bang your mom and become your father.
Well the Raiders have a very good O-line, a young stud running back, some young and pretty good receivers. They need to improve on defense. but I have no reason to believe they can’t be as good or better next year with Palmer at the helm.
Palmer is better than I think you give him credit for. I hated on him for quitting on the team, and he certainly has his shortcomings, but a strong arm and being accurate aren’t among them. He does need good pass protection though, so I’m not sure how that will work out with the Raiders. They do have a good running game and defense, which will certainly help. Palmer’s long history with Hue Jackson I am certain was also a factor in what they were willing to give up. There’s also the little thing about how professionals are paid to evaluate talent and that we fans don’t really know jack shit, too.
If I were a Raiders fan I would like it too. Palmer is going to come out rejuvenated. For whatever reason, he feels jilted by the Bengals making him a multi-millionaire many times over (he was probably mad about being saddled in Bob Bratkowski’s offense for so long as Brat was a Mike Brown guy and Marvin couldn’t fire him, and also because Palmer needs really good o-line protection which he wasn’t getting the last few seasons outside of Andrew Whitworth, who is quietly one of the best LT’s in the game…you can draw a timeline between Palmer’s decline in production dating back to 2007 when the Pro Bowl tackles Willie Anderson and Levi Jones began to get old/injured and his outlet guy TJ leaving, along with the mental implosion of OchoCinco and the addition of Terrell Owens…whom Palmer lobbied for, stupidly enough…)…
Palmer is not a bad QB. He’s Drew Bledsoe v 2.0. You know what you have with him.
Its a big deal that Hue is the coach of the Raiders and has a long history with Palmer. People don’t seem to realize how big that is on the surface. You’re right…I expect Palmer to start next Sunday with a limited playbook and to be calling his own plays from scrimmage in just a couple weeks. People always act like offenses in the NFL are soooooo complicated when they really are more about all 11 guys executing in synchronicity.
I agree with you. Outside of his poor YPC in Detroit (for obvious reasons), he’s been money whenever he plays. Nobody seems to want to play him. There has to be a reason.
I don’t agree. Palmer’s injury history amounts to his knee injury in the 2005 playoff game after which he put up Pro Bowl numbers in 2006, despite the Bengals missing the playoffs that year, so that wasn’t an issue, and an elbow injury in 2008, where he sat most of the year, only to lead a gutty team with a decent defense, a scrappy running game and little else to a divisional sweep in 2009. Palmer put in the right situation (good oline and receivers) will win you a playoff game. Duh…that’s every NFL QB, right?
I’d say “a decent offensive line, excellent if injury-prone RB, and a collection of unproven WRs, none of which has ever caught more than 41 passes in a season, and a defense that is 1) aging 2) giving up 400 yards per game.”
Put it this way: the list of Raiders players who figure to be better in two seasons-- guys who are 24 and younger – is longer than the list of guys 29 or older, who they figure to be worse in two years.
And given that they’ve opted out of the NFL’s main talent-acquisition mechanism for a season in order to replace one slightly above-average QB with another … I’d expect by 2013 they’re back to 5-11.
It’s Hue’s system, Saunders is just coaching it. The offense looks exactly the same as it did last year when Jackson was OC and Jackson still calls the plays. He was hired by “Coach” Davis on the strength if his system and he isn’t changing it.
Matt Cassell can clue him in, if not, the Redskins offensive players from 2008 or so. Someone is bound to figure out that complicated offense sooner or later. Al says so.
Pardon my ignorance, but I don’t know that I ever saw Carson Palmer while he played; my interested in football only really blossomed while he was sitting it out. How good was he, and how much of a grab would he have been back then?
From 2005 to 2007, he was arguably one of the top 5 quarterbacks in the game. Most people were looking at him as the next Peyton Manning; he and Ochocinco drew many, many comparisons to Manning/Marvin Harrison among talking heads and the like.
He hurt his elbow in 2008, and everything went a bit south. At first the injury was misdiagnosed, so he kept trying to practice with what turned out to be a ligament and tendon tear. When he came back in 2009, his arm didn’t seem to be the same.
He did throw for 4,000 yards last season, but he also threw 20 picks. I put that down to loss of arm strength; when you can’t throw the ball as hard, defensive backs have more time to react.
Put it this way: there’s a chance the Raiders are getting one of the game’s 10 best quarterbacks (ie., if it really took 2 years to fully recover from the elbow injury). There’s a much better chance they’re getting classic Jake Delhomme: good enough to win games for a team that runs the ball, not good enough to put a team on his back.
In 05-07, he was top 5: a terrific downfield passer. Since 2008, he’s been another guy; the injury is the common explantion, but I’ve also heard lost confidence or whatever.
Statistically, his yards-per-completion and interception rate haven’t changed nearly as much as his completion %, so I wonder if the arm strength is really the issue.
I expect we’ll see plenty of fly patterns to give us the answer …
I think that Carson’s struggles in late 2009 were directly tied to the lack of quality offensive line play, and the loss of Chris Henry. And defenses were adjusted to the Bengals running with the unbalanced line. Palmer would struggle without reliable and decent targets from the tail end of 2009 through the entire 2010 season, during which he forced a ton of throws into coverage to try to get the ball to TO. That resulted in a lot of Pick 6’s. I’m trying not to sound like a Carson apologist here, but what I guess I am trying to say is that Palmer’s issues were mental and the talent around him, not his arm.