While the Dolphins brass continues to damn Chad Henne with the faintest of praise, the team appears to be looking for a real quarterback solution during the off-season. With the Dolphins having only the 15th pick in the draft, a rookie QB might not be the answer, so rumor has it they might turn to NFL talent. Carson Palmer, the Cincinnati Bengals' embattled QB, might be at the top of the list.



The rumors, coming out of the Miami Herald and ESPN, aren't officially sourced to anyone in the organization, but it appears Palmer's name has come up.

Here's Herald sportswriter Armando Salguero's report:

So general manager Jeff Ireland and coach Tony Sparano, scouts and anyone else with a voice within the organization, must know which veterans could be available when the lockout ends. And Palmer is atop that list of possibilities for Miami. The others on the list of possible available QBs - Kevin Kolb, Vince Young, Donovan McNabb, Kyle Orton, Alex Smith - also have to be considered. But none of them rate higher than Palmer. All the others have been identified by the Dolphins as a group of has-beens, or a could-bes, or a never-weres.

"This comes from folks who have watched the films or crunched the numbers or done the evaluations or talked to the men who did," Salguero's clarifies.

Palmer, a seven-year veteran who never quite made the most of his Heisman-winning promise with the Bengals, apparently wants out of Cinnicinati. He's still under contract with the team, but a Sports Illustrated report states the Bengals' coach has already privately let it be known that Palmer won't be back in tiger stripes.

So what do you think about Palmer in orange and aqua? At 31, he's considerably older than Henne, and at best he'd be another stop-gap solution in the Dolphins' never-ending sinkhole of post-Marino quarterbacks.

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