Carson Palmer to the Oakland Raiders: Can He Lead Them to a Championship?

It was the talk of the pro football world on Tuesday when the Oakland Raiders gave up two picks—one a first-rounder, the other a potential first-rounder—for a 31-year-old QB with a bad knee.

All together, the Raiders have given up four draft picks—three in the 2012 NFL Draft—for three of their QBs—one for Terrelle Pryor, one for Jason Campbell and two for Palmer.

The injury to Campbell was very unfortunate for both him personally, and the longevity of the franchise's future.

They gave up a fourth-rounder for Campbell, which wasn't a bad deal considering how effective he was this season, and how much he had been improving.

But now that he's out, so there goes that pick.

Now with Palmer, it's for certain that the Raiders are not planning on building through the draft because they already have a rather young team, both CB Chris Johnson and DL Richard Seymour are both age 32, and are both are starters.

And with that in mind, those two will be suiting up in silver and black for at least three or four more years.

So it's wasn't a bad idea for Oakland to not try and improve via the draft, however that's only going to put that much more pressure on their current players to bring home the Lombardi Trophy.

The advantage to this will be that when 2012 kicks off they'll pretty much have the exact same team as 2011, except with the addition of Carson Palmer, as well as the acquisition of DB Chinedum Ndukwe.

Which finally brings us to the headlining question: Can Carson Palmer lead the Oakland Raiders to a championship?

They have all the tools, youth, experience, a solid run game and are clear about winning in the immediate future, as opposed to the next six to eight seasons.

But, Palmer's years are numbered.

So to be blunt about the question, no, Carson Palmer cannot lead Oakland to a championship.

He does buy them a few years under center being that he's only 31, but by the end of the contract he signed he'll be 35.

With a bad knee and limited mobility, he's not going to last through that contract for 3.5 years under center, especially since Oakland doesn't have any draft picks to build an offensive line that can both pass and run block.

Yes, having RB Darren McFadden back there will significantly help, and the Raiders will be the cream of the crop in a weak AFC West, but Palmer has yet to win a playoff game either.

There, he's 0-2, got his knee busted against Pittsburgh in the first one—in 2005—and significantly underachieved in the second against the Jets—in 2009 with a rating of 58.3.

Thing is, the receiving core he had in Cincinnati was much more established than Oakland's, not to mention they also had a better defense.

Make no mistake about it, Palmer gives the Raiders the best chance to win a championship, and they will be one of the better AFC teams for the next few seasons.

However, until he actually proves that he can in fact lead Oakland in crunch time, while aging on a bad knee, with a less threatening receiving core to go with the No. 28 ranked pass and No. 16 rush defense, there's not going to be very many believers outside of Raiders' fans.

And we have to discuss if Oakland were to even win an AFC championship, would they really be able to defeat a team like Green Bay or New Orleans in the Super Bowl?

Not a chance.

Be sure to check out John on Bleacher Report. 

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