Field Gulls FanPulse: Seahawks fans near the top for team confidence

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, presented by Yahoo! Sports — 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.

It’s the first week of the 2019 NFL season, and that means a fresh new FanPulse survey. We’ll start off with the national question sent out to every team this week, which is simply “Who’s going from worst to first in their division?” Since realignment in 2002, there has been at least one team who’s gone from the cellar to division champions every season except for 2014.

FanPulse respondents overwhelmingly voted for the Jacksonville Jaguars as the team who will bounce back and win the AFC South, having crashed to last place in 2018 after winning the division in 2017.

Jaguars: 52 percent

Raiders: 9 percent

Jets: 9 percent

Giants: 8 percent

Bucs: 7 percent

Lions: 7 percent

Cardinals: 5 percent

Bengals: 4 percent

I guess when you have a strong defense and an upgrade at QB with Nick Foles, the Jags seem by far the most logical answer. Add in Andrew Luck’s shock retirement, the Houston Texans giving up far too much just to get Barkevious Mingo, and the Tennessee Titans existing, and you have yourself an AFC South contender.

Now for the Seattle Seahawks poll, we have the usual “How confident are you in the direction of your franchise?” question, and while pre-Week 1 is the peak of optimism for just about every team, the Seahawks come in at 93%, ranking 9th among all SBN sites as we near kickoff.

Only the Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Browns, Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens, Chicago Bears, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Rams, and New Orleans Saints have more confident fanbases. We sit just ahead of the San Francisco 49ers, who are polling at 89%.

At the very bottom of the survey are the Houston Texans at a measly 28%. I suppose the Jadeveon Clowney trade, the lack of a GM, Bill O’Brien still being the head coach, and the haul they gave up just to get Laremy Tunsil and (to a lesser extent) Kenny Stills have the natives restless down in Houston.

The other teams below 50% are the Arizona Cardinals and Washington, and I can only assume Arizona is scared that they might break Kyler Murray before he can really show what he’s capable of in this league.

As for our Week 1 opponents, the Cincinnati Bengals are at 63%, which is eighth-lowest. If they were to come in and stun the Seahawks on opening day, I imagine polls will swing wildly the next week. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.