The scars of last January: Carson Palmer isn't the answer in Arizona

More than maybe any position in sport, the importance of ‘aura’ is paramount to success at quarterback.

The quarterback is one of America’s most mythical roles, with all sorts of grandiose connotations attached to it.

The quarterback is a leader of men, the captain of the squad, the man you turn to when you’re in peril, the guy who always saves the day and ends up with the girl.

At times, it wouldn’t feel out of place for the quarterback simply to take the field in spandex and a cape. At least it wouldn’t if you’re Tom Brady, Cam Newton or Aaron Rodgers. These stars have the skill and temperament to pull off the superhero act more often than not.

Others, like Eli Manning and Joe Flacco, lack the all-round quality of the game’s most elite signal calling superstars, but they have the mindset and calm disposition to inspire confidence in their teammates, coaches and fans. They have enough of the elements of that magical aura to make things work.

The glow of that aura is intangible, and because myths are based on moments, all it takes is one night or even one play for it all to go to hell.

For Mark Sanchez there is no coming back from the Butt Fumble, a play so ludicrous that his career will forever be haunted and defined by it. For Jake Delhomme, he could never escape the darkness of that five-interception and a fumble playoff implosion against the Cardinals, a debacle that forever blacked out any glimmer of confidence he had left.

The quarterback curse of the Cardinals playing playoff night games in Carolina claimed Carson Palmer last January. His four-interception, two fumble game in the NFC Championship – six turnovers, AKA a ‘Full Delhomme’ – ended Arizona’s season, and its stunning violence was profound enough for its doubts to carry into September too.

Entering the 2016 season, the Cardinals looked loaded. They had the deepest wealth of talent in the league and the most rounded roster too. The defence was supposed electric, full of A-grade talent in the likes of Patrick Peterson, Tyrann Mathieu and Chandler Jones, and the offensive line had been fortified. The receiving corps was arguably the best in the league and running back David Johnson was being touted as a superstar. Everything was set. Everything except Palmer.

Whether the scars of Carolina had sufficiently healed was always going to be decisive for Arizona’s season. An implosion as loud and impressive as Palmer’s that night is enough to sink a team. (Click to Tweet)

The quarterback needs to inspire team-wide faith, and when you perform as badly as Palmer did on the big stage, doubt can become pervasive.

Delhomme lost his team and never got them back. The damage to Brian Hoyer’s prospects in the league is irreparable after his mental breakdown against the Chiefs in the playoffs last season too.

Every quarterback has a bad game, but there’s a type of bad that is so stark and worrisome that it points to a player’s lack of faith in himself. Manning and Flacco are prone to the occasional stinker but they always seem to bounce back from it. They carry themselves as though they’re desperate to take the field again and make amends, because the previous failure ‘wasn’t them’.

Three weeks into the new season and Palmer hasn’t shown that same resilience. His stat-line was fine against the Patriots in week one but he was unimpressive, with the offence only finding life late, too late as it happened. He torched a Buccaneers defence in Week 2 that just gave up 37 points at home to Case Keenum. Week 3 at the woeful Bills looked like it was going to be another breeze, but nightmares can happen suddenly and unexpectedly, and one sure did in upstate New York for Palmer.

He was dreadful against an awful Buffalo defence, one that was 24th in DVOA last season, got worse over the off-season, and made Ryan Fitzpatrick look like 2004 Peyton Manning the week prior.

Palmer tossed four interceptions, all in an acid dream fourth quarter of coverage misreads, poor timing and forced throws into spaces that never existed. He lost two fumbles too to round another Full Delhomme, his second in four matches. That’s not OK.

Palmer is a much better quarterback than Delhomme, Hoyer or Sanchez, but his reputation isn’t commensurate with reality. Last year he put up MVP calibre numbers, but it was a breakout season at age 35, something which screams anomaly, and his first legitimately ‘good’ full season in nine years.

The Cardinals have had a troublingly sloppy start to the season, losing their home opener in a marquee game against the Patriots without Brady, and now falling to a Bills team that looked to be on the verge of collapse. It’s not Palmer’s fault that the Bills scored 33 points, their runners gashing what was supposed to be an airtight Arizona defence for 208 yards on the ground on 6.5 per carry, an incredible indictment on the Cardinals given that Buffalo had nothing to go to in the passing game.

It’s not his fault the Bills returned a blocked field goal for a touchdown or that Mathieu couldn’t recover a fumble that he seemingly chased across half the field.

The fourth quarter was his fault, though, and so was Carolina.

With every game that calls back that night in January it will become harder and harder to run away from. At 1-2 and with the difficult part of their schedule still to come – two games against Seattle and nightmare trips to Minnesota and back to the scene of the crime, Carolina – the Cardinals’ margin for error is shrinking.

And so is Carson Palmer’s.