John Clayton On Bengals Ownership On The Scott Van Pelt Show

As we pointed out in the previous post, ESPN Senior Writer John Clayton joined the Scott Van Pelt Show with Ryen Russillo Tuesday afternoon on ESPN radio, talking about Carson Palmer and how poor the Bengals organization is. Here's that transcript.

Scott Van Pelt: "Now that we're done (with the lockout), this Carson Palmer news, I continue to find interesting, apparently he's done in Cincinnati. Does that mean he's done in the NFL?"

John Clayton: "No, it just means he's done for this year and this news has not changed, really, since February. When he went in, talked to the team and said he's not coming back, nothing has changed. Mike Brown remains very adament about the idea that he doesn't want to respond to players who want out of Cincinnati. Because if he does he realizes it opens up the pandora's box of other players saying 'hey, you did it for Carson Palmer, why can't you do it for me?' This goes back to Corey Dillon, it goes back to Boomer Esiason. It's just one of those historical things with the Cincinnati Bengals and Mike Brown. Whether it means something for next year's draft or not, Mike Brown doesn't care. He cares more about the principles. So what I look at this as a sybatical for Carson Palmer. He'll come back next year when they're going to be close to the cap, after the season, plant his $11.5 million salary on their salary cap and at that point, he'll be able to move on. At this stage, other than watching on satillite TV, that's all Carson Palmer is going to be doing in 2011."

Brian Russillo: "John, Mike Brown, the owner of the Bengals, can talk about principles and he can say 'I don't want to reward anybody because everyone is gonna want out of Cincinnati'. How about this idea? Run a decent organization."

Clayton: (chuckles) "He's had success and he's had failure. Three years ago they were 10-6 with Carson Palmer and winning the division."

Russillo: "But nobody looks at it that way. Takeo Spikes is in here saying, 'yea when I played there we got throwaway new towels (?). I understand what you're saying, I just thinks it funny that the Bengals feel like we have to do this. And the only reason that they have to do that is because no one wants to play there because they run a poor franchise."

Clayton: That's what I think the concern is. I'm sure Mike Brown thinks it's working out well. I'm sure players have liked some of the things but I know some of the players haven't. What Mike Brown does not want to do was open the door for more people coming in and asking for trades, asking to be released. It would help if they could win. But you look at that team right now, no Carson Palmer, the likelihood Chad Ochocinco is going to go, the fact that Antwan Odom is probably going to be released too, now they're going to have $60 million to spend but the question is, if they lose Johnathan Joseph, if they can't re-sign Cedric Benson, this is a team that very well could be looking at Andrew Luck next year.