If you’ve wondered how a team with as much talent as Cincinnati has managed to underachieve the past two seasons, expert witness Carson Palmer subtly suggests, via Bengals.com, that perhaps the coaching staff bears as much responsbility as anyone. “At times I felt sick to my stomach and I didn’t have the flu,” complained the QB, which is a pretty accurate paraphrasing of what your editor was saying at about noon today.
“This is my most disappointing year in sports from junior Pop Warner to T-Ball to now,” Palmer said. “The losses. The way we lost. The fact we’re going to be watching the playoffs and we don’t have practice next week.”
Palmer and his teammates had no idea if Lewis is planning any changes to the coaching staff. After Sunday’s 38-25 victory Sunday in Miami, Lewis talked about his team being stale but said he wasn’t going to talk about possible coaching changes.
Asked if he thought the same coaching staff could turn it from being stale, Palmer said, “I don’t think so,” but he also said he doesn’t know if Lewis will make those changes.
“I don’t make those decisions,” he said. “I play quarterback.”
Although he’s the highest-paid player on the team and a virtual limited partner of Bengals president Mike Brown with a $118 million contract, Palmer said he’s not going to interject himself in team affairs.
“If I’m asked my opinion, I’ll be more than happy to give it,” Palmer said. “I haven’t been. This isn’t my team. I’m the quarterback. If I can help in any way, I’d love to. I think I can be a valuable help and if a situation comes up, I’ll help out.”
The LA Times’ Chris Foster and Sam Wallace quote newly hired UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel as hoping to make a run at former Palmer tutor Norm Chow. If successful, this would be a huge coup for Neuheisel’s staff, but given the respective resumes (and the been there, done that factor for Chow, currently preparing for Tennesee’s wild card clash with San Diego), shouldn’t Chow consider himself a viable candidate for a high profile college head coaching job?