My biggest fear for off-season - Disregarding Oline due to FINALLY having improvement - that's still NOT GOOD ENOUGH for a guy you let get demolished for years. 🤬 Don't forget!!!
CP - #1 pick drafted 2003 (acl injury 2005)
JB - #1 pick drafted 2020 (acl injury 2020)
Note: I didn't realize the rule you could not hit a QB below the knee was called the Carson Palmer Rule and implemented because of injury above.
Cincinnati Bengals 2005 season: Bengals make the playoffs. Win AFC North. Play wild card game at home. Carson Palmer tears his ACL & MCL getting hit 4 minutes into the game throwing a 66 yard TD pass to Chris Henry (RIP). Bengals lose game
Cincinnati Bengals 2015 season: Start 8-0. Have a good team. Andy Dalton fractures his thumb week 14 trying to tackle someone after he threw an interception. Out rest of year. Bengals lose Wild Card playoff game.
Cincinnati Bengals 2025 season: Start 2-0. Lose Joe for most of the season if not all the season due to dumb turf toe injury that hardly ever needs surgery.
i hope you don't mind me asking more about carson palmer and your opinion on him? he seems to seen as... very controversial by twitter bros, but do you think your average bengals fan from that era still remembers him fondly or not? (also tysm for the info about chad/housh!)
Oh yeah no problem!! Carson is… interesting to me? A little? I remember when I first got into the Bengals he was kind of like a cautionary tale for Joe narratively: first overall pick drafted to the Bengals, won a Heisman in college, wore number 9… like wow joe before joe I guess?? But then I learned he was (still is kind of) beefing with the organization over the past and how they did him wrong which kind of sucks to hear as a fan but also I kind of get it. The Bengals only made the playoffs twice when he was there and they never got past the Wild Card round.
Like as far as first overall picks go in terms of full career I’d say he was good considering he had a couple of pretty big injuries (2005 season wild card game gives me secondhand pain reading about it) that did derail his career. I guess that is kind of similar to how Joe’s had some injuries so far but they’ve never really felt as consequential? Like the injuries have sucked but the 2005 knee injury would be like if Joe got injured during the wild card game in 2022 against the raiders and then they lost. HORRIBLE. I hated typing that out 😭 and then the Bengals didn’t make the playoffs again until 2009 which was an emotionally harrowing season (to say the least) and then lost to the Jets in the wild card round 🕊️
After the (4-12) 2010 season Carson requests a trade out of Cincinnati bc the team is bad. The owners refuse so Carson threatens to retire. Chad posts some tweets about the whole situation:
(Idk why I have old af Twitter screenshots of this but the tweets are still up if you search) (there’s some tweets abt Carson that make me feel like exploding but anyway) (maybe I will reblog with some of them)
But then Carson is dead set on retirement unless the Bengals trade him so Chad goes to New England and the ship gets nuked. Eventually Carson gets traded to the Raiders and then goes to the Cardinals where he has some good years and then retires. So yeah.
I mean I totally understand him being resentful of the bengals bc there were definitely some wasted years. I think someone who has gone through that time probably understands also, I remember hearing about fans throwing trash on his front yard before. But also it does give sour grapes because the Bengals did make the playoffs five years in a row when he left and also the Bengals have gone to the Super Bowl. I think the front office is still questionable but they have gotten better (maybe by a little bit)
I learned way too much about him while doing research for a fic that I’m not even close to completing 💔 but I hope this did help satisfy your curiosity!!
