Field Gulls FanPulse: Seahawks fan confidence goes up after Rams loss for second time in a row

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.

Apparently there’s something about losing two close games to the Los Angeles Rams that makes Seattle Seahawks fans more optimistic about their team’s future than losses to any other team, including the 7-2 Los Angeles Chargers. When I posted the FanPulse results last week, fan confidence went from 86% to 59%. I can understand why, considering it was a home loss in which the offense was largely stagnant, and the defense struggled badly in the 1st half.

Entering this week, with the Seahawks having suffered a second straight loss and a season sweep at the hands of the Rams, I was curious to see if the return to sub-.500 would cause that vote of confidence to plummet further. Instead, it went up ten percentage points to 69%.

In early October, confidence levels shot up from 24% to 61% after the Week 5 home defeat to Sean McVay’s side.

I suppose when you fear an ass kicking and actually push the Rams to within 35 yards of an upset victory on the road, you can take more of an optimistic approach to the future of the franchise. After all, Seattle was a double-digit underdog and they once again gave Los Angeles all they could handle, so it wasn’t just home field advantage that made the first meeting competitive.

Seahawks fans are predicting an average point spread of 4 in Seattle’s favor against the Packers, who usually make life hell for Russell Wilson, but Dom Capers is gone so we don’t know if that will change. As for Green Bay, sitting at 4-4-1 but without a road win, their 31-12 thumping of a Miami Dolphins team that is somehow 5-5 pulled their fanbase’s low confidence up by double the previous week... except “double” in this case means 17 to 34%.

Damn, you’d think they were 1-8 and not still very much in the playoff chase. The point spread on their side is just 1, so when averaging things out I imagine they’re pretty split on whether or not they’ll win in Seattle for the first time since 2008.

The only team with 100% fan confidence is the New Orleans Saints, while at the very bottom are the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets, both sitting at 3%. Remember when the Jaguars were going to be the second coming of the 2013 Seahawks defense? Yeah...