Palmer Doesn’t Place Any Blame

One replay was all Carson Palmer needed to see.

The Pro Bowl quarterback won’t dwell on the play that doomed the Cincinnati Bengals’ first playoff appearance in 15 years. He tore a knee ligament on his first pass during a 31-17 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in an AFC wild-card game Sunday.

Palmer slowly shuffled around the locker room on crutches Monday, unsure when he’d have reconstructive surgery and unable to say definitively that he’ll be fully recovered in time for training camp.

As for the tackle that led to it all, Palmer said Kimo von Oelhoffen did nothing wrong.

“I don’t know Kimo personally,” Palmer said. “From what I’ve heard, he’s a classy guy. Football is football. I don’t think it was malicious at all. He’s a guy with a high motor that plays hard and was playing hard.

“It just happened. I don’t think in any way he was trying to do anything. It’s just part of the game.”

The Steeler lineman was stumbling as he came off a block and lunged at Palmer’s legs, crashing into the side of his left knee. Palmer tore the anterior cruciate ligament when the leg bowed.

He couldn’t bear to watch the replay.

“I saw it once,” he said. “I didn’t need to see it a whole bunch more than that.”

Although Palmer absolved von Oelhoffen, Coach Marvin Lewis thought the officials should have penalized him for a late hit. No flag was thrown on the play, a 66-yard completion to Chris Henry.

“That kind of play is the play by the rules in place to be a penalty,” Lewis said Monday. “The official didn’t see it that way. I think everybody who knows Kimo knows he plays hard. He’s not a bad player or bad person. He’s a good person. But it’s unfortunate and it happened.”

Palmer expects to have reconstructive surgery soon. The typical recovery time is six to nine months.

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Safety Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins was fined $17,000 by the NFL for spitting in the face of running back Michael Pittman of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Taylor was ejected and penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct for spitting at Pittman in the third quarter of Saturday’s playoff game. The offense was considered so egregious that Pittman wasn’t penalized for slapping Taylor in the helmet in retaliation.

The amount of the fine is the playoff bonus each Redskin player received for the NFC wild-card game, which Washington won, 17-10.

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Seventeen years after he was an intern with the Kansas City Chiefs, Herman Edwards officially became their coach.

Edwards, 51, was introduced at a news conference in Kansas City. He signed a four-year contract with the Chiefs after getting released from the last two years of his deal with the New York Jets.

Edwards would not answer questions about what happened between him and the Jets. He said what happened in New York would stay there.

The Chiefs will give the Jets a fourth-round draft pick as compensation.

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The Jets are talking to Jim Haslett, Mike Tice and Joe Vitt, all of whom were head coaches in the NFL this season, to replace Edwards.

General Manager Terry Bradway said Haslett, fired last week by the New Orleans Saints, spoke with Jet officials Monday. He said the team will talk to Tice, Minnesota’s former coach, and Vitt, the interim coach of the St. Louis Rams after Mike Martz left to have a heart ailment treated.

Bradway said that Mike Sherman, fired by the Green Bay Packers after the season, might be in for an interview but is not on his early list.

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New Minnesota Coach Brad Childress fired defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell and is considering Tampa Bay assistant Mike Tomlin for the job.

Childress has declined to discuss specific candidates, but said he had a staff in mind when he was hired to replace Tice.