Carson Palmer Faces Obstacles to Playing for Raiders

“I went to bed last night at 10:30 a retired football player,” Palmer said Tuesday at his introductory news conference. “And I got the text message at 4 a.m. and was told to get on a plane to Oakland.”

In the days since, increasing speculation about Palmer and the Raiders has been fueled by the team’s coyness about whether he will play on Sunday. But the stark reality of Palmer’s situation cannot be ignored. He has not played in an N.F.L. game since January. Before this week, he had not been with an N.F.L. team since his trade-me-or-else standoff with the Cincinnati Bengals began shortly thereafter. And the sum of his football action in the past nine months has been limited to three practices and multiple passing workouts at Southern California high schools and parks.

So, with the Raiders set to face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, what can reasonably be expected from Palmer?

Ken O’Brien, a former Jets quarterback, coached Palmer when he was at U.S.C. and has become a family friend and personal coach for him. In a telephone interview this week, O’Brien said that Palmer’s throwing arm looked as strong as ever during their workouts but that he would still face considerable challenges if he were to play against the Chiefs.

“It’s been four days,” O’Brien said. “It sounds crazy, but you have to learn everyone’s name. You have to learn the routes and the hot reads. You have to learn the cadence. You have to learn the timing.”

He added: “And then when it’s over? You have to learn the game plan for the team you’re playing.”

Pete Carroll, Palmer’s coach at U.S.C. who is now with the Seattle Seahawks, had a similar opinion.

“I just hope that expectations will balance out,” Carroll said in a telephone interview. “People are talking like the Raiders are going to the Super Bowl. They’ve got to give him some slack. He hasn’t thrown a ball in a game in months.”

Raiders Coach Hue Jackson was evasive all week about whether Palmer would start Sunday, and he continued to be on Friday. Referring to Palmer, Kyle Boller and Terrelle Pryor, Jackson said, “I think all three of the guys are ready to play.”

The three shared first-team snaps Friday, added Jackson, who would not rule out the possibility that multiple quarterbacks could see action against the Chiefs.

Still, the public focus remains on Palmer. A poll on the Web site CSNBayArea.com showed that 67 percent of respondents, as of Friday afternoon, had voted for Palmer to start on Sunday.

Palmer was noncommittal.

“I’m getting as prepared as I can,” he said. “I’m excited about the opportunity just to run on the field, let alone get a chance to play.”

When Palmer does play, whether it is this weekend or not, he will be attempting to live up to some considerable expectations. A former Heisman Trophy winner, he was a two-time Pro Bowler with the Bengals but struggled with injuries and eventually soured on the sometimes dysfunctional franchise.

Palmer had knee surgery in 2006, then played only four games in 2008 after tearing ligaments in his elbow. Since then, there have been questions about whether his arm strength has diminished, though Jackson said he had been pleased with what Palmer had shown in his few practices.

Despite his dispute with the Bengals, Palmer kept busy, which is probably why the Raiders are even considering playing him this weekend. During the off-season, he worked out with O’Brien and other friends in Southern California, including Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel, who was Palmer’s college roommate. Once the N.F.L. season began, O’Brien said he worked out with Palmer several days a week “wherever we could find grass” around Los Angeles.

They did drills, worked on footwork and threw to whatever receivers they could find — sometimes former professionals like T. J. Houshmandzadeh or Danny Farmer, sometimes high school kids.

“I caught some, but I didn’t do too much route running,” the 51-year-old O’Brien said. “That would really throw off his timing.”

Palmer was stoic about his situation with the Bengals during the workouts — “He stuck to his guns, but we didn’t talk much about it,” O’Brien said — and the two traded text messages after the news broke that the Raiders were pushing to trade for Palmer as a replacement for Jason Campbell, who broke his collarbone last week.

O’Brien said the one thing observers would most notice about Palmer was that “he is totally healthy now,” a development O’Brien said he believed would allow Palmer to return to the upper tier of quarterbacks in the league.

How quickly that can happen, however, is a subject of more significant debate. Many Raiders fans, and maybe even some members of the Raiders organization, want to see Palmer right away. But if he plays Sunday, O’Brien cautioned, it has to be seen in perspective. There is a large gap between the speed of a workout and the speed of an N.F.L. game, and that is something players struggle with even after they have gone through a full training camp. Palmer had no camp at all.

“There’s no doubt he’s going to get back to form,” O’Brien said. “It’s just a matter of getting his timing down. To be really comfortable? It’s going to take some time to get used to it.”

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Heidelberg Faces Mount Union With Unusual Optimism

“Professors after class get a sad look on their face and say: ‘Mount Union this week? Yeah, good luck,’ ” Suddeth said. “They mean: All the luck in the world won’t help.”

The story of Mount Union’s extraordinary success has been examined many times as the team trounced opponents during the past two decades. But perhaps its dominance is felt most sharply on the other campuses in the Ohio Athletic Conference — places like Heidelberg, a small liberal arts institution here in northwestern Ohio where the Mount Union game looms like Halloween, an annual rite of fall, except much scarier.

“But everyone goes to the game,” David Kindall, a sophomore at the university, said this week. “Even if it’s just to see if we score this time.”

Heidelberg has not defeated Mount Union since 1988 and has been outscored, 1,096-179, since then, which makes the average score in the last 22 seasons 50-8. Since 2000, Mount Union has scored more than 60 points five times and Heidelberg has scored more than 10 points only twice. Heidelberg is not the only team that Mount Union dominates; the Purple Raiders tend to rout everyone in Ohio.

“People look at the 10 schools in our conference and see one Goliath and nine Davids,” Heidelberg Coach Mike Hallett said. “We’re cast as the lovable losers. But that’s not how we look at it, or approach it. You don’t measure the value of athletics at an educational institution by the result, however lopsided, of one game. You’re missing every lesson if you do that.”

Indeed, at a time when the conversation at the highest levels of college football is dominated by academic dishonor and money-fueled, conference realignment deals, at tiny Heidelberg 150 players fill the roster without a single athletic scholarship. The team’s collective grade point average is just above 3.0. The practice field is dusty and only one locker room has adequate space for the equipment.

Heidelberg is the team that is supposed to lose big to mighty Mount Union on Saturday, and it knows it. But as they gathered this week, the players greeted the late afternoon with boisterous whoops, chants and hollers that drowned out the rattle of an adjacent railway and turned heads in the parking lot of a nearby machine factory.

“Where else would you rather be?” wide receiver Mario Escalante shouted as the first drills began Tuesday.

“Nowhere but here!” his teammates yelled in unison.

It is Mount Union week, and Heidelberg, which has won four of its first five games for the first time in 18 years, actually thinks it can win.

Hallett, who played on Mount Union’s first national championship team, in 1993, remembers his first year as the Heidelberg coach, preparing to play his alma mater.

“I looked at the film of them and of us and I knew we had no chance,” Hallett said. The team he inherited had a 1-39 record in its previous four seasons.

“So I told the kids that we don’t have a prayer of winning,” he said. “I didn’t want to give a typical gung-ho speech because I wanted them to know I wouldn’t lie. So I said we can’t win. But we can compete and prove to ourselves that we can get better.”

Heidelberg had been outscored, 187-0, in the previous three Mount Union games.

“But in 2007 we became the only team in the conference to score a point against their first-team defense,” Hallett said. “We kicked a field goal.”

They lost, 62-3.

“It’s not always going to be a proud moment, but there are things you can be proud of,” Hallett said, adding that the next week Heidelberg upset the conference power Baldwin-Wallace by 22 points, the first Heidelberg win over Baldwin-Wallace in 18 years.

Hallett’s first three teams had 4-6 records. Last season, Heidelberg, whose mascot is named the Student Prince, was 5-5. The scores against Mount Union have gotten marginally closer: 49-0, 44-14, 45-7.

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Jeff Tedford faces tough choices

Jeff Tedford is smarter than I am. He's a standup guy. And he has a moral compass in a business where you do better when you don't. [+] Enlarge AP Photo/Paul SakumaCalifornia coach Jeff Tedford faces an important offseason following a disappointing 5-7 season.I can't recall him throwing a player or coach under the bus for shortcomings or gameday failure. My impression is Tedford values loyalty -- among his players and assistants -- above anything else. To a fault perhaps, because that value might come before winning. And Tedford needs to start doing that again.

There is something wrong at Cal. The Bears have too many good players to finish 5-7. Yet there's also abundant evidence that Tedford is a good coach.

That means that he needs to take a long, hard and coldly objective look at his staff this month.

Why has his offensive line play slipped since Jim Michalczik left in 2008? Why has the performance at quarterback cratered? Does he have enough fire in the locker room? Does he have enough discipline? Why does his team show up and fight some weeks and seem completely flat others?

"It’s very important to evaluate everything that we do," Tedford said. "Obviously, we need to improve. There were games that were close and games that weren’t. Schematics, offseason work — whatever it is -- my job as head coach is to go back and evaluate everything we do. I’m going to gather information."

Gathering is good. I do not have answers. I am not in the locker room. I don't watch practices. And I won't use hearsay to judge a program. But let there be no doubt: Just going into 2011 with everything the same will not only signify inertia, it will inevitably lead to failure.

My impression is defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast did a solid job this season, and the long-time NFL coach will have a far better feel for the Pac-12 and the college game next fall. Still, is each defensive position coach the right fit? Does he get the most out of his players?

As for the offense: What is a fair and reasonable judgment of coordinator Andy Ludwig after two seasons? Should the Bears offense be better? Does it consistently out-scheme and outflank opposing defenses? Does it make successful, in-game adjustments? Is it fulfilling its potential based on available talent? Are players getting better as they get older?

Then comes quarterback. The Nate Longshore-Kevin Riley years ruined Tedford's reputation as a quarterback guru, and after a few games with Brock Mansion, well, let's just say Bears fans aren't confident that the lackluster play at the position will get better next fall.

Tedford needs to find a mentally tough swashbuckler who demonstrates that mistakes and setbacks won't shake his confidence and make him tentative. And some consistent accuracy would be nice, too.

“It’s going to be wide open [at quarterback]," Tedford said. "We have some candidates there. We have some young guys that haven’t gotten an opportunity because of injuries and youth. There are going to be five or six guys in the competition. Our challenge will be trying to evaluate that many guys with the practice time. It’s not just a two-man race. It’s everybody. Brock got some invaluable experience down the stretch. Obviously, we have to play better at that position. And we need to do a better job of putting them in position to be successful as well."

Cal fans have been obsessed for the past few years over the question of whether Tedford is the guy to get the Bears to the proverbial "next level." Has Tedford plateaued? Or have Cal fans just become too greedy? Berkeley, after all, is not Tuscaloosa or Columbus. It's an elite university that's known more for its counterculture than its football culture.

And you know what? Our country needs a Berkeley more than it needs another win-at-all-cost institution. Of that I am 100 percent certain.

When Cal fans ask about Tedford, you almost feel they are as much asking about themselves and their university: Should I not care this much? Am I keeping this football stuff in perspective? Or should I be more even critical because Tedford is paid a whole bunch of money when world-class professors are not?

Two years ago, the questions were unfair and premature. Tedford had transformed a program and made it a cash cow. But this fall, they became fair and relevant. And it's clear Tedford knows that.

His job this offseason is to make changes that right the program and redirect it toward the trajectory it had during his first five seasons.

The Bears roster doesn't look like one that will win nine or 10 games in 2011. That's not the real issue. It's more about putting forward a consistent product that performs to its capabilities.

You know: One that lays a tangible foundation to again start winning nine or 10 (or 11) games on a regular basis in the future.

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