Why Mike Brown and Carson Palmer were both wrong

In late October 2011, mere hours and minutes before the NFL trade deadline, the Cincinnati Bengals traded their longtime franchise quarterback, Carson Palmer, to the Oakland Raiders in return for a 2012 first round draft pick and a 2013 second round draft pick that could be converted into a first round pick if the Raiders make a deep run into the playoffs.

The trade came as a surprise to many. However, due to starting quarterback Jason Campbell’s potentially season-ending injury suffered last week, the Raiders seemed desperate enough to pay that high of a price for a disgruntled quarterback who had had a much-publicized falling out with his last team’s owner and had missed all of the 2011 season to date.

What should have been an even bigger surprise was that the Bengals were willing to part ways with the quarterback who had helped them to finally break out of their disastrous losing stretch which had lasted from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Carson Palmer, the No. 1 overall draft pick of the Bengals in 2003, had been credited, along with head coach Marvin Lewis, of finally putting the Bengals back on the path to respectability.

However, relations between Palmer and the Bengals soured in early 2011. The Bengals had won the AFC North division title in 2009 only to have a disastrous meltdown in the playoffs and then an embarrassing 4-12 season in 2010. Palmer decided he had had enough of Cincinnati, so he approached Bengals’ owner Mike Brown and asked to be traded, threatening to retire if he was not.

Brown informed Palmer that, as he had signed a contract through 2014, and in doing so had implied he would play it all the way through, Brown was not going to grant his request. When Palmer sold his Cincinnati home to imply he was serious about his retirement, Brown went and drafted quarterback Andrew Dalton to be Palmer’s heir apparent. As the 2011 lockout ended and a frenzied free agent period began, Brown re-emphasized his decision not to trade Palmer. Palmer’s failure to report to Bengals’ training camp was expected, but his later classless remarks about the Bengals’ organization in response to the team’s decision to release his brother in a roster-trimming move, seemed to portray Palmer as a selfish vindictive individual only truly concerned with his own interests.

Mike Brown finally acquiescing to Palmer’s demands is a move which will likely prove detrimental to the Bengals’ organization in the long run. The move made sense from the perspective that the Bengals as a team really did not need Palmer any longer thanks to Dalton’s strong play and that the Raiders were willing to give the Bengals a king’s ransom in college draft picks to acquire Palmer. However the other perspective, which should be much more important for the organization’s long-term success, says that when someone goes back on a signed pledge in a contract then that person should not be rewarded for his infidelity to his contract.

When Palmer signed his new contract, he pledged to play for the Bengals until 2015. When Palmer requested a trade from Brown, Brown informed him that, as Palmer had pledged to play for the team until 2015, Brown was going to hold him to that promise. For Palmer, that should have been the end of the conversation and he should have pushed on and continued to play for the team he had pledged to play for and known that if Brown thought highly enough of him to want him to stay around, then Brown would provide him with the players Palmer would need to succeed.

For Brown, there were two approaches he should have taken with this situation instead of the approach he ended up taking. First, if he was indeed open to trading Palmer, then he should not have made an adamant stand against trading him and then added to it with the talk of Palmer 'having committed to the Bengals in the contract he signed and I will hold him to it.' Second, if Brown was really and truly committed to not trading Palmer from Cincinnati, then he would have been wiser to let Palmer retire and sit it out until 2015 before attempting to make a comeback. By contrast, Brown, in reversing a stand that had been seen as adamant earlier in the year, seems to be sending a message to the team that anyone who makes enough of a distraction of himself will eventually have their demands met. That could lead to Brown losing control of the team in the sense of anyone taking him seriously. By not giving in to Palmer’s demands, Brown would have shown that the players would need to respect his decisions and that those who did not would be punished accordingly.

As Mike Brown and Carson Palmer now go their separate ways it remains to be seen what will happen to them. Brown seems to be running a team that is surging back into winning ways behind their new franchise quarterback Andrew Dalton. However, now that Palmer has been traded, it will be interesting to see how much control he and head coach Marvin Lewis retain over the players in the locker room and if the fallout from the trade affects the team’s play.

As for Palmer, he finally got his wish, but at the expense of his reputation. Palmer will likely be labeled alongside other quarterbacks in NFL history who rated their own desires higher then the good of their team, such as Jeff George and Jay Cutler. Palmer may also have ruined any chance he has of being listed highly among the legends in Cincinnati sports history by the whole fiasco, not that that seems to matter much to him. Despite the disaster in his first game, Palmer may still do well in Oakland, but with Jason Campbell experiencing a career re-birth in the city, Palmer’s stay will likely be short and, in all probability, he will be looking for work come next March.

© 2011 The Subsidiarity Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be re-published, re-broadcast, re-written or re-distributed without written permission from blog author.