State of the Nation: Off-season optimism poll part 2

Much has happened since January 6th when I unveiled my first optimism poll on you unsuspecting readers. To my delight the results favored greatly in a much improved version of the Raiders being fielded for 2013.

Unfortunately those results were slightly skewed though due to the extreme yes or no nature of the poll so this time around I will be including more options. The voting on the first poll had 1,293 votes take place with 837 people voting that the team would be much improved and 456 voting that they did not believe the team would be much improved for next season. It equaled a 64% to 35% victory.

Now that we have a few more particulars of the team sorted out we have a slightly better idea of the direction that the Raiders are heading so it is a good time to take another poll. I made the previous poll more general because I wanted to see the overall optimism of the community as strictly a yes or no on if the team will be better, but this poll will include intermediate categories so we can get a better idea of how optimistic many of us are.

The biggest things to consider for this poll is the new coaches that were hired to replace the former coordinators and assistant coaches. Those would be; Greg Olson replacing Greg Knapp at OC, Tony Sparano replacing Frank Pollack as OL coach, Bob Sanders replacing Johnny Holland at LB coach, and Bobby April replaces Steve Hoffman as Special Teams coach.

Has the completion of the staff helped give the community here at S&BP more confidence in the direction of the Raiders? We may find out soon, depending on the results of this poll.

What the new members of the staff really told us was that Dennis Allen was not afraid to make changes and admit he made mistakes his first year. The biggest mistake he made was not making adjustments during games and the fact that after the season was over he wasted no time in adjusting his staff leads one to believe that he will be better in that department in 2013.

The next optimism poll will be brought out after Free Agency has started and then another will come out after the draft is completed. Make sure to vote in each one if you can so that we can get as accurate of a reading on the state of the Nation as we can!