Re: the drop-off that Palmer supposedly had after his freshman season, I think a lot of people might be remembering it bit incorrectly after so many years.
Did his raw numbers drop? Absolutely, and by a wide margin, too. But most of that was by the design of opposing teams, who tried to eliminate him entirely from the game with max cover and short sky punts, or by just punting it directly out of bounds. Just to give you some firmer numbers, I think in his last couple of years opposing teams punted something like 80-90 times per year, and that Palmer only had about 25 returns each year, which ought to tell you what they were doing. Given how anemic our offense frequently was in those years, opposing teams weren't too worried about trying to maximize field position against our offense, they were more worried with giving away cheap points on a big play.
Some of the dip in his numbers, too, can be explained by him trying to make something out of punts that he should have just called for a fair catch on, because obviously we had offensive woes at the time (which dovetails with the above, also). Teams, of course, tried to kick away from Arenas, too, but they couldn't be quite as aggressive about it, because our 2008 and 2009 offenses could move the football well and score points in the way 1992 and 1993 could not.