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Confidence in disappointing Packers inches upwards after win over Falcons

Beating Atlanta was largely expected, so there wasn’t much of an upward jump in confidence numbers this week.

By Evan "Tex" Western
Arizona Cardinals v Green Bay Packers Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images

This week’s FanPulse surveys at Acme Packing Company and SB Nation show some trends that should come as little surprise to anyone who has followed the Green Bay Packers this year. The Packers beat the Atlanta Falcons at Lambeau Field on Sunday, winning 34-20 in a game that wasn’t nearly that close.

That contest was the team’s first since firing head coach Mike McCarthy and installing Joe Philbin as the interim head coach. That move was the single biggest catalyst for long-term optimism all season, according to our FanPulse confidence index; the win over Atlanta, however, saw the numbers increase only modestly.

Whereas last week saw a 23 percent bump in respondents who said they were confident in the direction of the Packers as a whole — increasing from 17 percent to 40 percent after the firing — this week’s increase is much more modest. It’s just a five percent bump this week, as the number now sits at 45% overall.

Here’s the graph of the results throughout the season:

Meanwhile, the Packers were an option in a question that went out to readers of all of SB Nation’s NFL blogs this week, who were asked which team is the most disappointing franchise in the league this season. While Green Bay did get about a quarter of the votes, they still lagged well behind the leader: the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The Jags got a whopping 49% of the vote to the Packers’ 24%, likely driven in large part by the fact that Jacksonville made it to the AFC Championship Game a year ago. The Packers missed the playoffs in 2017, thanks in large part to Aaron Rodgers’ broken collarbone sidelining him for more than half of the season.

Still, it would be understandable for Packers fans to vote for their own team here this year. This was still a team that entered the 2018 season with optimism, based at least in part around a new general manager and defensive coordinator. To scuffle to a 5-7-1 record at this point in the year absolutely should be considered a major disappointment.

Here are the full numbers from SB Nation’s surveys:

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