“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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