FanPulse: Niners fans are one of the more confident fanbases heading into the season

SB Nation’s FanPulse sends weekly questions to the teams most plugged-in and dedicated fans via email, and ahead of Week 1, we were asked how confident you were headed into the regular season, as well as which team that finished last in their division in 2018 would finish first this year. Let’s check out the results.

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Let’s see what has happened to fan base confidence heading into Week 1:

How we got here:

• At the end of the season, unsurprisingly, 49ers fans were only 81% confident in the direction the team was headed.
• Things took a turn for the better after free agency, as that number climbed all the way to 95%.
• Before the draft, the number dipped to 84%, and climbed two percent after the draft, to 86%.
• Heading into the preseason, we started sipping the Kool-aid again and that number climbed to 90%. Now, with real football here, that number is at 89%. That’s the 11th highest number out of all team sites.

Trying to figure out why the number dropped to 84%, and I wonder if that was fans reading into possible friction between John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan. It also could have been missing out on big name free agents like Earl Thomas, Odell Beckham Jr., and that Raiders guy.

In the national question, fans were asked about which 2018 last-place finisher had the best chance to win its division.

• The Jaguars were the popular pick at 52%. Losing Bake Bortles was the biggest addition by subtraction in the NFL. The Raiders, who finished last in the AFC West in 2018, only got 9 percent of the national vote. Here are the rest of the teams:
• Jets: 9%
• Giants: 8%
• Bucs: 7%
• Lions: 7%
• Cardinals: 5%
• Bengals: 4%