Not in the same way. There was no experimental evidence for the Higgs field before the Higgs was observed. These new particles arise naturally out of parts of the Standard Model that are already experimentally tested.
You're not wrong, but you'd have been really hard-pressed to find someone of significance who didn't already believe the Higgs mechanism was there. In the sense that mass exists, there was a high degree of expectation there too. It's actually quite amazing to have so many of these recent discoveries, also be confirmations. It's been over a century of this, starting with Relativity.