Cincy's emotional roller coaster

Cincinnati Bengals fans had plenty of reasons for optimism. Entering the 2025 season, their star quarterback Joe Burrow was healthy and happy.

Burrow was coming off a remarkable performance in 2024. His star receivers were on the team to stay, having signed contract extensions. Even with a team ownership situation that is miserable at best and some flaws elsewhere on the roster, it looked like it could be a lot of fun to cheer for the Bengals this season.

We are in the middle of week 4 of the regular season, less than a month into the schedule. And we already know that it is not fun to cheer for the Bengals this season.

Today

• The ups and downs for the Bengals, the Reds, and Cincinnati sports fans
• A really good NFL team is guaranteed to start the season 1-3
• Considering, for a moment, what makes a player a "trade candidate"

Down with the Bengals, but maybe up with the Reds?

It might be that the start of the 2025 NFL season was welcome for fans who happen to root for two Cincinnati home teams. The Cincinnati Reds had been scrappy, floating around the .500 mark for most of the season. But even with a roster full of promising, young players, it just didn't seem like they could get over the hump into true playoff contention.

Just as the Reds seemed to be settling in as a disappointment, the Bengals brought those fresh feelings of hope. It's amazing, then, how quickly and unexpectedly those two franchises reversed their respective courses and traded places.

Gone was the hope with the Bengals, extinguished the moment that we learned Joe Burrow would miss three months because of a turf toe injury. Here in its place was the exciting notion that the Reds might snag a wild card spot, a scenario made possible by Cincinnati's own strong play and a meltdown in New York that can only be described as "very Mets."

Entering this final weekend of the regular season, the Reds still had some catching up to do. They have done their part, winning their first two games on the road in Milwaukee. Having done that, and with the Mets continuing to Mets all over themselves, the Reds just need one more win on Sunday and they are in.

I hope that happens. If nothing else, I would love to watch Elly De La Cruz in the playoffs. And I didn't even think that was a possibility as recently as the beginning of this month.

I bet Cincinnati fans didn't think so either. But maybe this series of events will give them something fun after such a bummer of a start to the football season.

Please let it be Kansas City

There is a headline game happening in the afternoon window of week 4 in the NFL: the Baltimore Ravens travel to Kansas City to face the Chiefs.

Given the recent history in the AFC and the success of these two teams, this was likely to be a big game regardless of the specific circumstances. But even with tough early games on both of their respective schedules, I doubt many people were expecting it to be a showdown of 1-2 teams.

What that means, to state the obvious, is that either the Ravens or the Chiefs will start the season 1-3. It's not necessarily a disaster in either case, because there is still a lot of season left. Even so, it does make things much more difficult. That team will have to dig out of that hole. They certainly won't be able to afford another loss in the next few weeks.

In terms of the vibes so far this season, I'm inclined to think it would be more of a crisis for the Chiefs than the Ravens. At least from my view sitting on the couch, the Ravens still mostly look like an elite team. They have just had a couple bad breaks and a couple key mistakes that cost them in two losses to very good teams (the Bills and Lions).

The Chiefs, on the other hand, appear to be confronting an identity crisis. Patrick Mahomes might still be the best player in the NFL, but their offense just stinks so far. If it stinks again this afternoon and they end up losing at home, I'm thinking there will be some drama.

So with all of that said, I really hope it's the Chiefs that lose and start 2025 with a 1-3 record. I welcome that drama.

Why would they tell us that?

Allow me to pass on some wisdom from Chris Harris (of Harris Football fame). If you see a report from "NFL sources," you should ask yourself a simple question: why would they tell us that?

For there to be sourced reporting, that means someone from a team or from a player's representation wanted that information to get out. They have some incentive, whether it be to apply some public pressure to the other side or add some juice to the trade or free agency market.

With that, let's practice together by taking a look at this report from NFL.com's Ian Rappaport.

Gee, I wonder who fed them the information that Russell Wilson is "handling things like a pro" and that teams are pretty much already lining up to trade for him?

This story crawled across the feed at the bottom of Red Zone so many times on Sunday, it made me think that the Giants expressed some real urgency when they shared this "scoop" with reporters. They wanted to be sure that it was presented as a serious and important and time-sensitive story.

It's almost like they think every other team's front office will definitely be watching Red Zone, they will see that Russell Wilson is "emerging as a trade candidate," and they will rush to their office to start putting together an offer.

That might be what the Giants are hoping for. Here is the reaction that I think they will actually get from NFL front offices.

Odds and ends

• I was rooting for the Houston Astros to miss the playoffs, which I wrote about earlier this week. They missed the playoffs. R.J. Anderson writes about what went wrong (CBS Sports).
• Also from CBS, here's a look at how the Detroit Tigers are scrambling to get back on track now that they officially avoided a full meltdown and earned their spot as a playoff team (CBS Sports).
• As part of the ongoing attempts to figure out what is happening with the aforementioned Ravens, Diante Lee takes a look at some of their early struggles on defense (The Ringer).

Let's wrap up today with the Cleveland Guardians clinching their playoff spot in a truly fitting manner: a walk-off hit by pitch.