Bengals: Palmer Still Not Up for Trade

Albert Breer is reporting that Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown is still adamant on either keeping QB Carson Palmer or forcing him to retire. If this is true, Palmer's heavily rumored trade to Seattle - already called a "done deal" by some - won't materialize.

I defended these rumors a few weeks ago as more than your idle cyberspeculation. In a nutshell, Palmer is ready to move on from the Bengals and also has a family matter in the Pacific Northwest that's prompted him to move there. He's already sold his house in Cincinnati, and Twitter murmurings have placed his children in the Seattle vicinity. The circumstances simply make Seattle the only feasible town from which he can both attend to his family and continue playing football. He's financially and personally prepared to retire, and has backed up with actions his threat to either retire or be traded to Seattle.

Mike Brown, one of the most stubborn owners in pro football, seems to be opting for the former. The game of chicken will continue as long as the labor dispute does, so we'd hardly expect Brown to admit the trade's existence right now.

Still, I'm starting to have misgivings.

RUMOR: Carson Palmer to Seattle for Mid-Round Picks

Don't panic if Seattle doesn't draft a quarterback on Thursday - it might just mean that they already have one coming.

Rumors are heating up that Cincinnati QB Carson Palmer has a trade deal in the works with the Seattle Seahawks, and that the asking price is incredibly generous: a 5th-round draft pick and a 3rd-round (at the highest) pick in 2012, and a contract significantly less than either his current contract in Cincinnati or the contract that Matt Hasselbeck asked the Seahawks for.

Your immediate reaction is one of mocking incredulity. Those fanboys again. No way that would ever happen.

Well, there is a specific set of circumstances that could give sensible framework to the trade. Those circumstances have been authenticated separately by Rob Staton at Seahawks Draft Blog, working from a well-connected source he trusts, and a Seahawks.net forum member who also claims a contact within the Bengals organization. Adam Wright of Seahawks_Talk tweeted back in March that Palmer was being targeted by Seattle, and Sam Farmer of the LA Times has theorized the move as well, though the latter's comments could just be speculation.

There's also this Deep Throat with some intimate info that contradicts nothing we know about the situation. (Text, but NSFW).

Validating this rumor feels a little like validating the moon landing. There's a ton of quick, convenient contradictions that look good on the surface, but explore each of them with the facts and each sticking point goes away. The challenge is to overcome the "Oh, come on" reflex - the feeling that if you have to spend more than 5 minutes justifying something, you're just on the wrong path.

Here's the obvious counter-arguments: