Carson Palmer Explains His Reasons For Leaving Cincinnati (Kind Of)

Several days ago we had written that the Carson Palmer's return just wasn't that interesting. One commenter clarified that while it's still interesting, just not that important. For sure the Cincinnati Bengals haven't shown much interest. Head coach Marvin Lewis reminded everyone that nearly 30 player on the current roster never played with Palmer, throwing an indirect blockaide at the media to limit the questioning that could take away the team's focus against the Oakland Raiders (he's probably loading up more sniper videos than usual this week).

Palmer on the other hand couldn't avoid the demanding questions about his departure with the Cincinnati media, which he began talking about on Wednesday. His talking point for over a year has been "it was time to move on", but now he's offering a little more.

“My last year there was physically, mentally and really, mentally just draining. That’s part of the reason it was just time,” he said.

...

“Just a culmination of things. Some things that I had learned that ownership ... just some things that built up over time, and it was just time for a change.”

We had suspected as much, but not so much a point against the organization; rather specifically a receiver like Chad Johnson (which wasn't brought up) or the other individualized characters in the Bengals locker room. Nor did Palmer expand on his interrupted thought about ownership with the local beat writers, finally hinting his point with the Oakland media following his conference call.

“I have seen guys, run into guys back in San Diego, talked, texted … I think that anybody that’s ever played for that ownership knows what I was doing and why I was doing it."