Carson Palmer suggests Bengals weren’t trying to win a Super Bowl

Carson Palmer wasn’t kind to the Bengals in a new interview.

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Carson Palmer interviews always drive plenty of emotions through the Cincinnati Bengals fansbase.

Palmer gets asked questions, which assuredly includes the Bengals, Palmer answers those questions truthfully — for better or worse.

Earlier in the week, Palmer had heaped praise on both Joe Burrow and Duke Tobin.

But in a different interview during Super Bowl week, Palmer sat down and dived a bit into why he ended up leaving the Bengals and forcing his trade, according to CBS Sports’ Damon Amendolara:

“That’s why I wanted out: I never felt like the organization was really trying to win a Super Bowl and really chasing the Super Bowl. Because that’s what today’s day and age is. The game today is you can’t just hope you draft well and not go after free agents and you just end up in the Super Bowl. You gotta go get it.

“And when the organization is completely behind doing what it takes to win, and you’ve got the right players, then that’s the recipe for a Super Bowl. When you’ve got good players but you’re not really forcing everybody in the organization’s hand to do what we can to be better, to do what we can to win a Super Bowl, that’s the difference in the NFL. You look at what Bob Kraft’s done, you look at the teams that have had success year in and year out. You look at what goes on in Baltimore. I mean, that team is always good. That team is doing whatever it takes. They are willing to do whatever it takes to win and that’s why they’re consistently in the playoffs regardless of who their quarterback is.”

That’s…not going to play well with many Bengals fans. Palmer has been very open in the past that he went to Mike Brown and demanded certain things such as the team hiring a general manager and simply modernizing. He didn’t feel like those things happened. And clearly, he felt those things were happening elsewhere.

Granted, the counterargument here is simple: After Palmer left, the Bengals went to the playoffs multiple times with Andy Dalton.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe Palmer was a wake-up call of sorts for the organization. And the one big overarching thing here is seemingly having the luxury to build a roster around a rookie quarterback’s cheap contract.

Which loops in another reality — some years teams just aren’t going all-in to win a Super Bowl. It’s a business and some years are transition years or otherwise, though teams would never say it out loud. That’s just how it goes.

Palmer has his feelings on this matter publicly and the other party (the Bengals) doesn’t speak on it often. His one-sided accounts tend to split the fanbase, as this one will, too. Perhaps the ultimate gage of this will reveal itself depending on how the Bengals respond this offseason to having the first pick and restarting around a rookie passer.

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