Minnesota Vikings FanPulse Week 4: Is the sky falling?

For the first few weeks that we’ve looked at what fans of the Minnesota Vikings think of this team, courtesy of SB Nation’s FanPulse, confidence in the team has been incredibly high. . .among the highest in the National Football League, as a matter of fact. The Vikings were one of the few teams to find themselves in the 90% range from the beginning of the season right up until last week’s game against the Buffalo Bills.

Sufficient to say, that shook things up a little bit.

With the sort of level-headed, non-emotional response that you might expect, this week’s FanPulse shows that the level of confidence the fans have in this team has gone from 92% all the way down to. . .35%, an incredible 57% drop. That’s the biggest drop among all of the SB Nation NFL blogs for this week.

So, is the sky really falling in Minnesota? Well, Vikings fans might think so. . .but the other NFC North fans apparently don’t agree.

SB Nation asked fans of the NFC North teams which team in the division that they thought was the best. While most of the division was skewed towards their own team, and understandably so, there’s still a lot of respect for the purple out there.

As you can see, fans of three of the four NFC North teams. . .the Vikings, the Chicago Bears, and the Green Bay Packers. . .all think that their team is the best in the NFC North, and a pretty solid case can be made for any of them at this early juncture in the season.

But, if you look at the graphics, you’ll see that fans of the Detroit Lions still think that the Vikings are the best team in the NFC North, and that Bears and Packers fans think that the Vikings are the best team in the division that isn’t their team.

So, while fans of the Minnesota Vikings are down on their team a bit (and it’s not a surprise that they are), it still appears that the rest of the division has a healthy level of respect for the purple and gold. Hopefully, starting with tonight’s contest against the Los Angeles Rams, the Vikings can start to restore the natural order of things a little bit.