FanPulse Week 3: Which coach will be fired first?; Colts fan base loses confidence despite Week 2 win

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across the NFL powered by SurveyMonkey. As the season kicks off in just a few weeks, each week, we’ll send 32 polls to 100+ plugged in fans from each team. Colts fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

The Indianapolis Colts leveled out their record (1-1) after outlasting the Tennessee Titans in their Week 3 AFC South opener.

The team still struggled in the kicking game as Adam Vinatieri nearly botched another game, but ultimately the team’s passing defense, and offense stepped up enough to get their first victory of the season.

As the Colts head into Week 3 for their home opener against the Atlanta Falcons, we’re back to see how the fan base is reacting to the direction of the team. Our national question this week also gets much more interesting as well. With several teams starting out 0-2, the survey wants to know who ‘we’ feel the first head coach will be that gets their walking papers.

Once again, we’ll start with the national question this week.

Some news comes with this question involving Pat Shurmur among this coaching group. the New York Giants named Daniel Jones their starting quarterback and Eli Manning has found himself as the backup for the second time in three years, by the second front office staff. He’s not at risk right now according to the voters.

Additionally, nobody really feels Houston Texans’ coach Bill O’Brien is at risk, after all he is pulling most of the strings and he’d likely last through the season and has been bullet proof up to this point.

With Cam Newton’s injury issues, and the Carolina Panthers’ issues overall, Ron Rivera finds himself on the hot seat. Though he’s likely in real trouble if things don’t turn around, the masses don’t see him to most at risk either.

Another coach from the AFCS, Doug Marrone could very well be in hot water sooner rather than later as well. Marrone may not be the coach most in trouble within this survey, he is definitely a very close second place. After the Jaguars’ performance on Thursday Night Football, fans may be a little bit more forgiving after an 0-2 start.

However, in the eyes of those taking part in the FanPulse survey, Jay Gruden is not invoking much confidence from NFL fans. Washington doesn’t look good right now, there may be a move at quarterback needed, and injuries, as well as a lack of weaponry may lead the Redskins into the basement of the league very quickly without a major turnaround.

And now on to the Colts..

After bouncing back from a very strong dip in confidence in Week 1 (from 73% to 90%), the Colts have taken yet another dip in the fan base’s confidence level in the franchise. This week the team comes in at an 84 percent clip, which isn’t the massive slope from a couple weeks ago, but it’s still notable.

How do we explain this away?

Quite honestly I wish I knew. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t still impressed with Frank Reich. Jacoby Brissett, while not burning up the passing game by any stretch, he’s still proving to be a solid decision maker, is leading the offense down the field on drives when the team absolutely needs some points, and his pocket presence continues to improve as well.

The Colts’ defense has rebounded with a much better performance in Week 2 than they had in Week 1, and it appeared that most Colts’ fans would have been at least marginally pleased with what they saw considering the offense continues to put points on the board.

At any rate, the Colts need another victory over their Week 3 foes — the Atlanta Falcons — and should that occur, you can rest assured that Colts’ fans confidence in the team will rise.

Around the rest of the AFC South, you can see that Titans’ fans have soured a great deal after spanking the Browns in Week 1, then dropping one at home to our Colts. This is nothing to dismiss as their fan base has dropped their confidence level 50% from 89% to 39%. WOW!

In Houston the base’s confidence level remains low, but that seems to be typical for some reason. The Texans have a lot of potential but in spite of Deshaun Watson maintaining his impressive play, the fan base is certainly not buying all the way in.

Down in Jacksonville, the Jaguars’ fan base is still holding back much excitement as Gardner Minshew has taken the reins of the team, and is putting together some very solid performances which is surprising just about everyone who is watching.

After Week 1 they saw a massive dip in confidence and were one of the largest droppers in Week 2 as a result of Nick Foles’ injury and the team not looking great in general.

After Thursday night’s big AFCS win, this should all get rectified a little bit for Jaguars’ fans.