Field Gulls FanPulse: Confidence levels soar among Seahawks fans, even after a loss

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse — a survey of fans across the NFL, powered by SurveyMonkey. Each week, we send 32 polls to 100+ plugged in fans from each team. Seahawks fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

Remember last week’s FanPulse survey results? Only 24% of Seattle Seahawks fans who participated in the poll expressed confidence in the team’s direction. This was coming off a win against the Arizona Cardinals, but the uninspiring performance from the passing offense and the season-ending injury to Earl Thomas presumably led to a 27% drop from Week 3 to Week 4.

As we enter Week 6, even with the Seahawks coming off a 33-31 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, look at those numbers shoot back up! Suddenly there’s optimism abound!

From 24% to 61%! That 37% jump is tied with the Minnesota Vikings for the biggest increase in confidence across all SB Nation NFL sites. Well I expected an increase but not that high. Perhaps the revival of the running game, the emergence of David Moore, and the fact that they were competitive with arguably the best team in the NFL are all factors for clicking the “confident” button in the survey.

Also a sign of positivity is the fat that Seahawks fans have predicted an average margin of victory of 9 points against the Oakland Raiders, which is tied for the largest winning point differential with the Vikings (against the Arizona Cardinals) and Rams (against the Denver Broncos).

Let’s check on the Oakland Raiders now. They sure seemed quite confident at the start of the season. Since then? Well... let’s just say Jon Gruden has a lot of work to do.

Believe it or not, the Raiders’ 19% confidence polling is not the worst even in the AFC West. That honor belongs to the Denver Broncos, who are at 4% after getting embarrassed by the New York Jets, sending Vance Joseph’s group to a third straight defeat.