Cincinnati Bengals
Palmer's play not up to par
By C. Trent Rosecrans, CNATI.com Posted January 9, 2010 11:00 PM ET
Carson Palmer swears he's healthy. The elbow he injured last year is fine, he'll undergo surgery on his left thumb sometime this week and his knee has fully recovered from the 2005 playoffs.
In short, there's no reason for him to be as bad as he was in Saturday's 24-14 playoff loss to the Jets.
Could it be that the savior of the Bengals, the first overall pick in the 2003 draft, is on the decline and will never be the player Bengals fans expected? Could it be his 2005 season wasn't the beginning, but a peak?
Now 30 years old, Palmer has fewer playoff victories than his former high school ballboy. In the matchup of USC quarterbacks, the rookie caretaker, Mark Sanchez, completed 80 percent of his passes and finished with a 139.4 quarterback rating, while the veteran leader completed half his passes and had a 58.3 passer rating and a loss.
The key to victory was supposed to be to make Sanchez throw the ball -- and it was, for the Jets. Palmer was supposed to be the one who was able to come through in the clutch, but he missed three shots at the end zone from the Jets' 11 when it appeared the "Cardiac Cats" could strike again. Then Shayne Graham missed a 28-yard field goal attempt and the season was, for all intents and purposes, over.
"We missed some throws, we were high on some throws, particularly early on," Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis said. "It's not like him."
But this season, it was. Palmer had one 300-yard passing game. He had eight games with fewer than 200 yards, including a 146-yard performance on Saturday.
"I've seen better out of Palmer," said Jets cornerback Derrelle Revis, who intercepted Palmer in the second quarter to set up New York's go-ahead touchdown. "I don't know if it's the cold or what."
He wasn't good in the cold last week -- completing one pass for no yards -- but he wasn't good indoors in Minnesota, either, completing 15 passes for 94 yards against the Vikings.
At his best, in his Pro Bowl seasons of 2005 and 2006, Palmer was as accurate as anyone in the game. His accuracy, more than the shear power of his arm, was what set him apart, what made the Bengals' offense one of the most feared in the NFL. Saturday, Palmer missed several receivers high and also threw ball behind an intended target. On one deep pass, Chad Ochocinco broke inside and the pass fell incomplete near the sideline.
Palmer's longest pass play of the day was a pass interference call against Revis good for 26 yards.
Ochocinco has done and said all the right things, but the tandem that was supposed to rival Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison has been more talk than show. Ochocinco didn't have catch until the fourth quarter Saturday and finished with two catches for 28 yards.
"I tried to be on point, at the right place at the right time for Carson and that was the best I could do," Ochocinco said.
Not that Palmer was helped much by his receivers, who had several drops. Laveranues Coles and Andre Caldwell were injured for much of the game.
The Bengals' once-feared receiving corps is left looking tattered, mediocre and more suited for the run game than the high-powered passing game once enjoyed at Paul Brown Stadium. It looks as if the team was correct in picking receivers in the second and third round of the 2008 draft, they just missed on the second-round guy: Jerome Simpson was inactive again for the Bengals' playoff game. He played in just two games this season and has one catch for 2 yards in his career. Coles, who was supposed to replace the departed T.J. Houshmandzadeh, was Palmer's favorite target Saturday but disappointed for most of the season. Caldwell, picked a round after Simpson, has shown flashes but has lacked consistency. The tight end position hasn't delivered and there was, of course, the unfortunate case of Chris Henry.
The Bengals have talked about the change in philosophy, but instead of playoff weather being the reason, it's just as likely that they don't have the personnel to run the wide-open offense.
"We've struggled to throw the ball and that has to be fixed," said offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski.
Said Palmer, "If the coaches go back to the drawing board and decide we need to throw, that's great. It's so much more complicated than just saying, 'We're going to throw the ball.' There's a number of things we need to figure out as a team and decide what's best for us."
There's plenty of blame to go around.
"It's never just one thing. It's always a little bit of everything. It starts with the protection, it goes to precision in route-running and sometimes it goes to the athletic ability to separate," Bratkowski said. "You have to get open at the right time. We'll go back and look at what we've done this season and where we need to get better."
But the NFL is a quarterback league, and when you have a $100 million quarterback, that's where the blame goes first, and in all fairness, where it should go.
Categories: Cincinnati Bengals, Featured Stories, News
Tags: Andre Caldwell, Bob Bratkowski, Carson Palmer, Chad Ochocinco, Chris Henry, Derrelle Revis, Jerome Simpson, Laveranues Coles, Marvin Lewis, T.J. Houshmandzadeh
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