Allen: Palmer still learning new offense

Still concerned over Carson Palmer's less-than-stellar showing Friday night in Arizona?Raiders coach Dennis Allen is not, despite Palmer looking far from comfortable at times in coordinator Greg Knapp's version of the West Coast Offense."Carson is still learning in this offense," Allen said in a conference call with Bay Area reporters Saturday evening. "I don't have any reservations or any doubts at all about Carson Palmer. I think he's had a good camp and I expect that when opening day comes around, that he'll be a good player for us."Palmer played the entire first half against the Cardinals, completing 13 of 24 passes for 107 yards and an interception for a 48.4 passer rating.REWIND: Few highlights in Raiders' exhibition loss
His arm strength and thus, his accuracy seemed off throughout, as demonstrated by his overthrowing a wide open Darren McFadden down the left sideline and his ill-advised pass down the left seam to tight end Richard Gordon that was picked off by Cardinals safety Kerry Rhodes.But in one drive, he was quintessential Palmer, driving the Raiders from their own 18-yard line to the Cardinals' 1-yard line. He completed passes of 12 and 14 yards to Jacoby Ford and Darrius Heyward-Bey before end zone drops by Heyward-Bey and Rod Streater from the 13-yard line halted the drive."When we move the ball like we did, we need to get more points out of it," Palmer said. "We just need to keep our eye on the red zone and keep working on it. We need to get better and get ready for next week."Four days earlier, against Dallas, Palmer was three of six for 33 yards and an interception and a ghastly-looking rating of 27.1, though the three incompletions came on two drops by Ford and Ford not fighting hard enough to break up the pick, per Allen."We need to look at this film and continue to get better and improve, and I just need to score more points," Palmer said after the exhibition in Arizona. "There are some things that we can clean up that were pretty obvious. We had some good things that we need to improve on also."We have good plays we can get better on, and obviously you can get better on the bad plays. So it was a good learning film and it will be a good week of work getting ready for the next preseason game."The Raiders play host to Detroit on Saturday and Allen said Palmer would play more against the Lions than he did at Arizona.