Carson Palmer's return to the city where he made his NFL bones could be a big story, but it really hasn't been.
Maybe it's because the Cincinnati Bengals and Oakland Raiders, who'll meet Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium, aren't very good. Maybe it's hard for anyone outside of Cincinnati to care. Maybe it's because Palmer and the Bengals never really accomplished anything, and now he's an aging quarterback whose last Pro Bowl came six years ago. (They only reached double-digit wins twice together.)
Current Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton barely knows Palmer, who wasn't around the team's facilities before being traded to the Raiders last year. Other Bengals pretty much shrugged at the Palmer storyline.
Palmer, though, revisited some of the details of his departure.
"It was time," Palmer said Wednesday, via The Cincinnati Enquirer. "Anytime you are somewhere for five, six, seven, eight years, sometimes it is just time for a fresh start, a change, something new, and that's obviously what I thought, and obviously, the ownership there didn't -- until the last second."
Palmer said this will be his first time back to the Cincinnati area since he was traded. He reiterated he did not quit on the team and said he informed Bengals owner Mike Brown of his intentions after the 2010 season.
"Just a culmination of things," Palmer said. "Some things that I had learned that ownership -- just some things that built up over time, and it was just time for a change."
The Palmer-Chad Johnson edition of Bengals provided plenty of highlight clips over the years, but they only made the playoffs twice. Dalton and A.J. Green already are halfway there.
That's why Palmer's return to Cincinnati has drawn limited regional interest.
Follow Kareem Copeland on Twitter @kareemcopeland.
