FanPost

How to answer the inevitable, impossible question


If you frequent the "Ask a Raider Fan" threads our people have been putting up in other teams forums, you know that the #1 question is "Is Palmer worth the draft picks?" or some variation on that.  They don't ask about McFadden first or the injury situation or even about Hue as a first year coach. Nope, they want  to know about the trade. I've thought about pre-writing some "canned" answers, and simply copying and pasting them to these threads. There's no simple answer to this.



If only we had a device which allows us to travel to parallel universes where we don't make the trade. If only we could see into an alternate future where the result is the same, it'd be an easy call. Because without knowing who we'd draft with those picks, how they would turn out in the long run, and how much they contributed to the team, there is no way of knowing. We are left to speculation and opinion. It's because we can never know for sure, short of winning a Super Bowl where Palmer makes a significant contribution to the effort, that we argued so much in here on this topic, and why we will continue to get this question the rest of the season in each forum we go into.

If we would have drafted a pair of studs headed for the Pro Bowl that could help us at keep positions, the trade becomes more dubious. If we would have drafted a pair of busts, it becomes more favorable. What about Huff and McClain, 2 first round picks (even though the trade will probably not bring that high a price)? Is Palmer worth Huff and McClain? Plenty of fertile ground there for debate, but no easy answer to this question.

Frankly I'm astonished that it's this big a deal league-wide, that it's become the number one question for us. I honestly wouldn't have thought the rest of the league would have taken such notice. But it has been made to clear to us that this question is very much on the minds of other team's fans. So what to tell them. What would you say?

And remember, the point of this is not to get the argument started again. It's to find out what you would say as Ambassador for SBP.