exactly right. He ran faster than any one chasing him. I played against him in HS, when he was a Jr. We had some pretty good athletes as DBs. One got a FB scholly in MS, and another got a track scholly in the 100M so both pretty fast. He could outrun both of them and made it look easy. I also heard rumors that not even Teague could catch him in live drills in practice at Bama, and we know teague had some wheels.I don't remember Palmer ever posting any super fast 40s or 100s, but he was just one of those other world athletes who seemed to be able to run as fast as he needed to run. His quickness and cutting ability also helped to make him very, very difficult to tackle in the open field. If he had run QB in a system like Oregon now runs, it would have been very fun to watch and very difficult to stop. In fact, if memory serves, I believe he did play some QB in high school and even a little bit at Bama. I definitely remember the two point conversion to tie UT that year.
Palmer did play QB in HS, along with every other eligible position - seriously - every one including TE and FB. He got the ball from every one of those positions also. Drove us nuts...