The efficacy of the mid-week fantasy football news wire is always a beast that is associated with mixed results.
As fantasy football writers, it’s very difficult to navigate through the countless amounts of starving headlines that are designed to be supplemental stories rather than actual advice that fans can actually use.
It's not our fault, have you seen the price of ground meat lately?
Ergo, it is up to us writers to really nitpick what we hear and read about before presenting it all to you; such as the recent speculation that Carson Palmer still has a place in the 2011 NFL season, and his potential to be reunited with Pete Carroll in Seattle.
I know, it’s a very enticing consideration to think that Palmer might actually play again this year, and yes, if he were to be traded, I can safely assume the majority of fantasy football writers would be lining up for their seat on the “breaking news” meat wagon concerning a situation that has been speculated over since April—yeah that's right, it's been THAT long.
But whether it will happen before Tuesday’s trade deadline is a totally different beast.
NFL.com’s Gil Brandt suggest a trade scenario that would send Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin to Cincinnati for Palmer which would satisfy both sides, giving Seattle the veteran quarterback that Tarvaris Jackson is NOT, while supplying the Bengals with another young receiver for the future.
*Cough!*
Conversely, however, Joe Reedy of the Cincinnati Enquirer speculated about a possible trade involving Seahawks linebacker Aaron Curry for Palmer, and suggested it wasn’t going to happen.
Shortly after the fact, Curry was traded to the Oakland Raiders in exchange for a seventh-round pick in 2012 and a conditional mid-round pick in 2013, leaving the speculative Palmer trade wide open.
See what I mean?
The underlying issue at hand, though, is that it’s also widely accepted that Bengals owner and GM Mike Brown doesn’t want to set a precedent for unhappy players to dictate their own will; an act that would leave the ownership’s credibility in question.
So what does this all mean for fantasy owners who are trying to keep their finger on the pulse of the Carson Palmer situation?
Well, for one, it means everyone has roughly one week before they find out if Carson Palmer is yet again a viable fantasy football option off of the waiver wire.
But unless you are completely devoid of a QB2, and assuming that the suspected trade does in fact happen, Palmer’s actual fantasy value will not be felt for a few weeks afterwards.
Yes, Palmer has been working since August, but that “work” only means his own conditioning and approach which is vastly different from working with an actual playbook—Donovan McNabb anyone?
- Would Palmer be an upgrade over current quarterback Tarvaris Jackson? Yes. But again, the trade idea has been perpetually stuck in speculation mode since what...forever, and we don’t even know if the Seahawks would just rip Jackson out of the starting role unless he royally screws up over the next week or so.
- Would the presence of Palmer finally provide some legitimate fantasy value to the Seahawks receivers like Sidney Rice and Ben Obomanu? The potential is certainly there, but it will take a few weeks to really decide whether or not it is worth using the pooper-scooper to grab him.
- Would Palmer under center add value to Marshawn Lynch since Palmer is more threatening of a quarterback than Jackson? No, Lynch was washed up two years ago, and if you are still riding that horse you may want to put him out to pasture and contemporize, man!
In the end, this story might be more fodder for starving writers than actual news we all can latch onto, but in the same vein, it’s intriguing enough to stay abreast of the situation in regard to fantasy football.
Remember, unexpected options that come traipsing along can sometimes be that shot-in-the-arm particular fantasy football teams are in search of, and this situation would certainly suggest such a shot.
For more specific fantasy football advice, be sure to check out our Week 6 Rankings and Week 6 IDP Rankings.