Bengals' misery has fans craving Reds spring training (and it's only October)

October in Cincinnati was supposed to be loud. Instead, Sundays have turned into sighs. The Cincinnati Bengals have skidded into a three-game losing streak, and every week without Joe Burrow has felt like watching a high-performance car try to win a race with the hood popped.

The city that roars in stripes suddenly started glancing across the river at box scores from Chavez Ravine, we know how that ended. Now they’re peeking at who’s throwing in Goodyear next February, and wondering if it’s socially acceptable to start counting down to Cactus League first pitch… before we even reach the middle of football season.

That’s the tell here: Cincinnati Reds baseball has become the emotional escape hatch. Not because a Wild Card sweep felt good — far from it, but because baseball offers time. Time to fix, to blend, to add, to dream. Football is unforgiving; one toe and the whole year tilts. Baseball lets you tinker for six weeks under the Arizona sun and talk yourself into a kid’s new stance or a rebound year from a veteran bat. After the way the Bengals have cratered, that kind of hope has real currency.

Bengals’ nosedive makes Reds spring training the city’s next circle date

Meanwhile, the Bengals’ situation is exactly the kind that drains a fan base. Burrow underwent surgery for a Grade 3 turf-toe injury — think torn structures in the big toe that wreck push-off — and while the broad guidance has been “at least” three months, the timeline isn’t locked. In the interim, Cincinnati has tried to ride it out with Jake Browning through three straight losses, then moved decisively on Tuesday to acquire 40-year-old Joe Flacco from Cleveland for veteran ballast and a steady hand. It’s triage football, and everybody can feel it. 

If you’re a Cincinnati sports fan, you can translate this mess in your sleep: with Burrow shelved, the margin for error evaporated, the turnovers stacked up, and the offense shrank. Browning wore it after the latest loss; the front office answered by adding Flacco for competence in the huddle and a shot of belief in the locker room. Necessary? Sure. Inspiring? Only if you believe duct tape can win December. No wonder folks are sneaking peeks at depth-chart battles before the Reds finished packing up their locker room. 

And yes, the Reds just got bounced fast, two and out against the Los Angeles Dodgers — but that’s also why spring training feels so tantalizing. There’s a clean-slate energy you can’t fake. Cincinnati’s to-do list on offense is clear enough: find more consistent contact in the middle, stabilize on-base skills at the top, and add one more thunderbolt to protect the young core. The beauty of baseball’s calendar is that none of those fixes are due this Sunday. They’re due in February and March, where competition can actually sort out answers instead of exposing flaws on national TV. 

There’s optimism to sell, too. The rotation remains a real foundation, the farm keeps nudging talent upward, and a full, healthy spring for the everyday group changes the conversation around run creation. That’s the monthly cadence fans crave right now: incremental gains, not weekly verdicts. After a Reds season that ended in a blink and a Bengals season that’s already dragging, a spring with open position battles and lineup experiments sounds… downright therapeutic.