Palmer is not having a great year, by any means, but then again, you may be one of the few people on the board, that understand Palmer's last season was an exception to the norm. Palmer is a very, average quarterback, and it is not helping that four out of his five receivers are not playing anywhere near the level they have been, and yes, Palmer has nothing to do with Floyd, and Nelson's drops, or John Brown and Jaron Brown's health.
Yes and no, remember K9 said that before last season too, the prior year was an outlier he'll regress to the mean. Then he didn't and K9 kept silent and now he's struggling this year and K9 is bragging about so many people having been wrong when he was the one that openly predicted last season would not happen.
The problem with regression to the mean is football is a different beast, Qb's are so heavily influenced by so many other factors.
Last year Palmer was 35 TD 11 picks, great year, best ever for him, the prior year it was 11 and 3 before he got hurt, that's a 22 game stretch of 46 to 14 completing 63%. What was unusual last year was the YPA, 8.7, career high he's only topped 8 one other time in his career. That's an abnormally high YPA, an indication he had a great year, his receivers had a great year, and the push the ball downfield style worked.
He has always had that level of talent, his 2nd year as a starter(3rd year he sat as a rookie) he put up 32-12 on the Bengals and they went 11-5 and surprise they had really good Wr's that year, Chad Johnson, TJ Houshmanzadeh, Chris Henry, 4th in the NFL in scoring. It was 11 years ago but the point is he has had big seasons before, 28 and 13 the next year, then 26 and 20 and he got hurt. Last year was perfect we had a run game and healthy productive Wr's. This year we have a great run game but the WR's are not healthy and not productive.
2015 was a career year, nobody expected him to do that again, but the dropoff to this year is not just on him IMO, you can't run the system we run with a makeshift OL and beat up Wr's and then blame the QB when it doesn't work.
I'm as big an Aaron Rodgers fan as you'll find but I realize, he's an OUTLIER, so is Brady, there are very few guys that are that good that it doesn't really matter who the hell they play with. Rodgers 2 weeks ago people were saying what's wrong with him, he's got 27 TD's 7 picks 64% completion and he's been playing with a kickoff return guy at RB and another average at best OL. Nelson is good but Adams, Cobb those are good not great players but Rodgers is still so good he makes them look better than they are. The problem is there aren't that many Rodgers and Bradys out there.
As you said if it's Palmer's issue why all the drops, why the constant shots of Arians yelling at Floyd for running the wrong route or stopping. Ellington is playing so sparingly and when he's in, he looks like he wants no part of the ball at all, not looking, not being where Palmer thinks he should be. Maybe that's on Palmer, or maybe AE just flat isn't sharp or doesn't want the ball.
Cutler is simply not a viable solution, find a younger guy hopefully an actual young QB with a future. Put the pieces in place around him, Prescott looks amazing, now put him behind our OL with our WR's and ask yourself how good he'd look.
The biggest issue with Palmer beyond age is he's not mobile and with a bad OL it's becoming a bigger and bigger problem. I don't care if he can run or not I'm not a huge fan of running QB's but that he can't move enough to buy a few seconds and then complete the pass is a big issue now because the OL is so bad. That's what a guy like Rodgers or Prescott or Wilson brings.
