Browns fans’ confidence back up to 87% heading into Week 5, while Ravens’ support crashes

This week’s FanPulse voting results are in, heading into Week 5 of the NFL season. If you haven’t signed up to vote each week, you can still do so here.

The Browns confidence jumped 29 percentage points from 58% to 87% between Weeks 4 and 5, a big improvement after defeating the Ravens in Week 4. I knew that would be a make-or-break game for Browns fans’ confidence for the near future, and Cleveland’s decisive victory reassured fans that this team is here to contend.

Meanwhile, Ravens fans had been enjoying a confidence of 97% each week during the regular season; and even the loss to the Kansas City Chiefs only dropped them 3 percentage points, down to 94%. The loss to the Browns? It sunk them all the way down to 38%, a decrease of 56 percentage points. Glorious. Fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers still only have 31% confidence after picking up their first win of the year, while the Cincinnati Bengals sit at 30% confidence.

This week’s national poll looked at which replacement quarterback I would take right now if I had to pick someone. The leading vote-getter was the Daniel Jones of the Giants. The problem is that I think this poll can be interpreted in different ways. I took it to mean, “Which would you take temporarily, if your starter got injured?” That made me go with the veteran, Teddy Bridgewater. But perhaps the poll question is asking more about who you’d take as a long-term option, in which case Jones makes sense.