Our most interesting Seahawks fan survey ever
How good do you expect the Seahawks to be this season and how does that compare to fans who have a different opinion? Seaside Joe 1973
Recently, we’ve been talking about expectations and our most recent Seahawks fan survey was gauging what you expect from certain players on the team. I’ve also been using Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” a lot recently, including in this week’s article about why I think most NFL rebuilds tend to fail.
One part of Kahneman’s explanation that I failed to mention was the part about the methodolgy that he and his colleagues used to collectively gauge their own expectations of how long it would take to write a textbook. These very smart people with a literal specialization in being reasonable, logical, and measured estimated that it would take 1.5-2 years to complete a textbook that eventually ended up taking 8 years to complete.
But how did they come up with their original estimate? Kahneman:
“I was following a procedure that we already planned to incorporate into our curriculum: the proper way to elicit information from a group is not by starting with a public discussion but by confidentially collecting each person’s judgment. This procedure makes better use of the knowledge available to members of the group than the common practice of open discussion.”
They basically took an anonymous survey and that’s what I want to do again today, but I want us all to split off into three groups BASED ON HOW GOOD YOU EXPECT THE SEAHAWKS TO BE IN 2024.
With the option to CHOOSE ONE OF THREE scenarios below, my only request is that you enter the door that you ACTUALLY believe best fits your expectations for the 2024 Seattle Seahawks.
And also that you only answer one survey, not all three.
I’ll repeat that:
Please only choose ONE survey to answer and go based on your expectations of how many games you think the Seahawks will win in 2024.
“But Seaside Joe, I don’t KNOW how many games the Seahawks will win!”
That’s fine: NOBODY KNOWS!
You have a gut and it’s okay to use it. Enter the door that feels right to you right now. There is no downside to having an expectation and being wrong. There is only a downside to not participating at all. There are three roads I decided to go with today:
If you expect the Seahawks to be 11-6 or better
If you expect the Seahawks to win between 8-10 games
If you expect the Seahawks to do no better than 7-10
I will explain why I chose those three options after I give you the links because it’s definitely time to get to the actual surveys to choose from:
1. If you think the Seahawks will go 11-6 or better:
CLICK HERE!
This survey is for fans who think the Seahawks will have a really good season, winning at least 11 games, if not 12, 13, or more. Please click this survey and only this survey if you think the Seahawks will be 11-6 or better.
2. If you think the Seahawks will finish between 8-9 and 10-7:
CLICK HERE!
This survey is for fans who think the Seahawks will be 8-9, 9-8, or 10-7. Please click this survey and only this survey if you think the Seahawks will have one of those three records.
3. If you think the Seahawks will do no better than 7-10:
CLICK HERE!
This survey is for fans who think the Seahawks will have a little bit of a “down year” compared to average. Please click this survey and only this survey if you think the Seahawks will be 7-10 or worse.
If you think other Seahawks fans would enjoy participating in this, please share it with them! Forward the email to them and/or post on social media:
What’s next?
After giving you a couple of days to respond and compiling the results, I’ll post the answers and compare between the three groups in a Seaside Joe newsletter for next week. If you do not want to miss it, you need to be subscribed! It will be a free article, just like this one, but if you want to support Seaside Joe with a $5 monthly or $55 yearly subscription, you will not regret it and definitely get your money’s worth:
You might be wondering…
“Well, why did you choose those records, Joe? Don’t you think you could have gone with (this other parameter), which would have been better?”
I had to think about this for a long time. Basically, I think that most people are going to gravitate towards the middle. That’s why outliers are outliers and the Seahawks have been somewhere “in the middle” for a long time now. I had to make the middle option as narrow as possible without being too narrow; if I allowed 7-10 and/or 11-6 to be in the “middle” option, I think almost all of our survey answers would come from there.
I think that if the high had started at 12-5 or the low had started 6-11, I would not have gotten very many answers in those surveys.
When can we talk about our expectations?
You can do it today! Members of Seaside Joe have really amazing and fruitful public discussions about the Seahawks every single day in our comments section. I genuinely learn the most about the Seahawks from our commenters at Seaside Joe:
However, when we share our thoughts anonymously we are able to be honest about them in a way that can’t always compare to what we share in a public forum. Not necessarily “more honest” either, just honest in a different way. Some fans are not shy about saying that they think the Seahawks are going to have a worse year than the norm, but many would rather keep that to themselves, which is understandable.
There are also fans who think the Seahawks are going to be a powerhouse, and they could be just as shy about sharing that opinion as those who fear the worst: We’ve all seen the public shaming of someone who says that they believe their favorite team will win the Super Bowl when those expectations are far off from the “acceptable” narrative of that team.
I’m pretty pumped about how good we can be this year, but given the competition, I had to choose door number 2. Once there, my optimism kept bubbling up. And you’re right, I’ll be most interested in seeing the results and how different the questions are for each group.
Love this poll, Seaside Joe!! I'm ever the optimist. New season, new people everywhere, new smiles, new beliefs. As Coach Mac said at his first day of practice, "It's like Christmas, man." GO SEAHAWKS!!!!!