Mike Brown: Carson Palmer Will Play For the Bengals, Or He’ll Retire

This doesn’t really come as a big surprise, but Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown is holding steadfast in his refusal to trade quarterback Carson Palmer as he’s demanded.

“We don’t plan to trade Carson,” Brown said. “He’s important to us. He’s a very fine player, and we do want him to come back. If he chooses not to, he’d retire. And we would go with Andy Dalton, the younger player we drafted, who’s a good prospect. Ideally, we’d have both of them. That’d be the best way to go forward. If we don’t have Carson, we’ll go with Andy.”

Brown also went out of his way to talk about just how much he likes Dalton as a player.

“He’s very football intelligent, he’s been with our coaches, and Jay Gruden, our coordinator,” Brown said. “Jay had a very good feeling about his football abilities, his abilities to understand the defenses and how to go about things. He’d been productive at the college level, and we think he has a good shot at it here.”

At first, it sounded like Brown would genuinely just allow Palmer to retire rather than trade him. But I think going out of his way to praise Dalton is his way of leaving the door open and perhaps inviting other teams to at least make him an offer he can’t refuse.

You won’t see me defense Mike Brown very often, but this is one of those times when what he’s doing will probably help in the long run.

If he came out and admitted that Palmer was going to get his wish and be traded, it immediately drops his trade value because now the interested teams know they have the upper hand. They would know the Bengals don’t have a choice but to get rid of Palmer for the most they can get.

This way, however, teams could start bidding against themselves in order to pry Palmer away from the grips of the Bengals and retirement.

This is what I thought when the Chad (I refuse to call him Ochocinco) Johnson saga reached a boiling point and Chad demanded a trade. But Brown held strong and did exactly what he said he would do, proving me wrong in the process, so perhaps I’m underestimating just how stubborn this guy truly is.

Of course, if a team offers something substantial for Palmer, who doesn’t want to be there anyway, and Brown turns it down just to watch Palmer file his retirement papers, he goes from stubborn to just plain stupid.