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Carson Palmer on Fast-Track to Comeback Player of Year Award

By Shaun Church

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Thirteen-year veteran quarterback Carson Palmer is no stranger to the comeback trail from ACL surgery. On his first pass in his first playoff game with the Cincinnati Bengals, way back in 2006, Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Kimo von Oelhoffen fell into Palmer’s left knee, ultimately ending what could have been a great playoff run for the Bengals.

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We all know what happened last season, as Palmer tore the replacement ACL from eight years prior on a non-contact play against the St. Louis Rams.

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Palmer is determined to come back from his second major knee injury of his NFL career, and he’s off to a near-perfect start. Since 1960, only Charley Johnson began a season with more touchdown passes in the first two games for the Cardinals than Palmer’s seven, tossing nine in 1965.

Palmer is tied with Tom Brady for the league lead with those seven touchdowns through Week 2. He is also third behind Tennessee Titans rookie Marcus Mariota (129.9) and Aaron Rodgers (128.4) in passer rating, sporting a grandiose 124.4 rating.

Many talented players qualify for the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2015, including teammate Tyrann Mathieu and Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, among others. But Palmer has a leg-up on them all based on his play thus far.

He has picked up right where he left off in 2014, when he went 6-0 with a 95.6 rating while helping the Cardinals to an NFL-best 9-1 record before too many injuries damned Arizona’s season.

Through two games, Palmer has completed over 64 percent of his passes for nearly nine yards per attempt. How does that stack up against the first two starts of each year of his career? The table below illustrates just how good he has been so far—and in his Cardinals career overall—at the start of the year.

He has his highest passer rating through two starts in a season of his career. His completion percentage? Only twice has he topped it; not since 2007 has he completed a higher rate of passes than he has this season.

You could say Palmer is better now than he was a year ago, and he may be the best he has ever been. While rehabbing his knee, he fine-tuned his mechanics to correct bad habits he had picked up since his last ACL injury.

"“Going back to the foundation and starting from the ground up has paid dividends for me, mechanically,” Palmer told Jenny Vrentas of MMQB.com. “I’ve gotten back to the basics, some of the things I was really good at as a younger quarterback, and may have not spent enough time on over the years. It’s something you don’t typically do in the offseason.“It will help my completion percentage, it will help with my accuracy and it will also help us as a unit, because I won’t be making my left tackle’s job as difficult.”"

That Palmer has been this good this late in his career—especially considering he is 10 months removed from ACL tear No. 2—speaks to his drive and his will to be the best while chasing his first Super Bowl appearance.

He has the roster around him to carry him through a tough game or two. He has the support system in head coach Bruce Arians, who has believed in him since the pair arrived in 2013, even after a rocky start to his Arizona career.

If he keeps up his frenetic pace, Palmer will run away with the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2015.

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