Carson Palmer suffered a “mild to moderate” high ankle sprain during the preseason game against the Saints on Friday. On Monday he had a protective boot on his leg and both coach Marvin Lewis and Palmer said they will “see” about playing him on Thursday against the Patriots. Should they sit him? The long and short of the answer is this: Yes, God almighty and heaven above, sit his white quarterbacking butt down! Should anyone really need an explanation why? I mean, unless you’re the Vikings, your team’s fortunes are tied to how well your QB plays (On a side note, I swear that if Brett Favre comes back now, after he said he’s done for the 100th time, I will snap. Literally, I think my brain will snap into two under all the hoopla that this never-ending story will entail. So now the Vikings players are saying, “to a man,” that they “expect” Favre to play by their 3rd preseason game. If this happens, you will find me huddled in the corner of a cell in an institution, with my knees to my chest and rocking myself back and forth, saying over and over again, “Brett says he done, but he’s not done, he’s coming back. He’ll come back and he’ll play and then he will say, ‘My arm hurts; I can’t play.’ He will sit out a couple of weeks and then he will unretire and play against the Packers. Then he will retire and then come back NEXT SEASON.” I will be saying this with tears rolling down my face and stupid grin that will be a cross between Heath Ledger’s the Joker, Norman from Psycho, and the psychotic dude/dudette from Ace Venture #1 (“Do you want your laces out, Brett?”)).

Telling Bengals fans that their prized QB may play on a bad ankle in a meaningless game is like telling parents their child with down syndrome must be Kimbo Slice’s punching bag before an MMA practice match (if you don’t know who Kimbo Slice is, he’s about 6-5 300 pound dude who learned to fight while being homeless. Imagine trying to fight a homeless and starving Prince Fielder for a piece of bread). This would be absurd! I don’t care if his ankle is 99%. The one percent chance of something going wrong will happen 100 percent of the time against the Bengals.

As an illogical Bengals fan, deep down inside of me, I actually would like to see Carson play. Even in spite of his ankle. I know, it doesn’t make sense, but I’m using fan logic right now, which makes as much sense as finding Paris Hilton attractive (*shudder*… you could not make a pole long enough for me to touch her). Carson had one quarter of work against the Saints. If he doesn’t play against the Patriots, he’ll have about 3.5 to 4 quarters of pseudo-game work before the regular season starts. If you take into account last year, he will have at the most 20 quarters of game experience since the end of the 2007 season. Does that make me nervous? I wake up every morning, realize that I’m a Bengals fan, and I get nervous. Anxious. Paranoid. There’s always a sense of doom around the Bengals. Even in the optimistic year of 2009, there is a dark cloud next to the rainbow of hope that’s in Bengaldom.  Our backup QB, J.T. O’Sullivan did a decent job when he played, but he’s just not Carson.  So please, Marvin, don’t listen to fan logic (like he would anyway). Sit Carson’s pasty white butt down. Thank you.