FanPulse: Chargers fan confidence recovers after statement victory

Plenty of you here at Bolts From The Blue have been taking part in the ongoing fan confidence surveys since last year. This is part of SB Nation’s FanPulse tool, which sends weekly questions to the city’s most hardcore fans via email.

If you are interested in joining the Chargers FanPulse, please sign up here.

Trends

• At the end of last season, 76 percent of Chargers fans reported confidence in the team’s direction. After free agency, that number climbed to 81 percent.
• Prior to the draft, only 71 percent of fans were confident in the direction of the team. After the draft, that number jumped all the way to 88 percent.
• By preseason Week 1, that number had fallen again to 78 percent confidence. That number fell off a cliff as we approached the regular season all the way down to 59 percent.
• Following the Chargers’ Week 1 overtime win against the Colts, 58 percent of Chargers fans remain confident in the direction of the team. That difference is small enough to be considered holding steady.
• With a loss to the Lions in Week 2, fan confidence was shattered, and it now sits at 20 percent.
• With another loss, this time to the Texans, fan confidence sits at 17 percent.
• Getting back to .500 has the fan confidence climbing all the way to 41 percent.
• Apparently, losing at home to a team that was talking about embracing the tank days before you played them is not good for confidence, and ours has fallen to a new low of 12 percent.
• Losing to a rookie undrafted free agent quarterback named “Duck” has our confidence tumbling to 7 percent.
• At a certain point, you just become numb to the losing and confidence has now bounced back up to 9 percent.
• Stealing a win on the road against a bad Bears team has confidence back up to 14 percent.
• An emphatic road win over a good opponent has confidence back to week 5 levels at 41 percent.

The Packers were supposed to destroy the Chargers on Sunday. Instead, it was the Bolts who did the destroying. They looked better than they had all season. Some of that was attributable to the new offensive coordinator, but there was better energy from the whole team. One could almost imagine this team putting together a run.

All fan bases were asked which top team is a pretender and one team ran away with it...

In what comes as no surprise, the Buffalo Bills were singled out as a pretender. The team quarterbacked by Josh Allen certainly inspires less confidence than the rest of the group of “top teams.” And the Packers fresh off getting their butts kicked by the Chargers received the second most votes.