The mood inside the winning locker room was ebullient — as it should have been.
The Jets were basking in the glow of their 38-20 domination of the Dolphins Sunday at MetLife Stadium. And why shouldn’t they have been? They deserved an exhale moment of joy. They had lost their last two games and four of their previous five.
It was not long after the win, though, that you started hearing the “P’’ word coming from some of the Jets players.
Playoffs.
The Jets believe they are a playoff team. Do you?
The Jets have now entered the “show-us’’ portion of their schedule.
Show us you’re a playoff team. Go beat the Giants on Sunday, win two games in a row, get to 7-5 and show us you truly are ready to make a run at a first playoff berth since 2010.
Show us that four-of-five slide was an aberration, a month-long blip in an otherwise successful season.
The 6-5 Jets, as they stand right now, are not in the playoffs. They are, however, in the thick of the wild-card mix, which is more of a statement to how mediocre the league is this year than it is to how good the Jets are at the moment.
But the win over the Dolphins did significantly change the outlook to the Jets’ season — at least outside of their Florham Park, N.J., facility, anyway.
The Jets were not being taken very seriously as a legitimate playoff threat entering the Miami game. They changed that perception — if ever so slightly — with the win over the Dolphins.
Not to be a downer, but to add perspective: The Jets have one win over a team with a winning record (the 6-5 Colts) and they just beat up on a Dolphins team they hammered almost two months ago in London. So we know the Jets are a lot better than the Dolphins.
But do we know they’re better than the Giants (5-6), Titans (2-9), Cowboys (3-8), Patriots (10-1) and Bills (5-6) — the opponents remaining on their schedule?
We know they’re not better than the Patriots. So scratch that. But the Jets had better be better than at least three of the other four teams otherwise that playoff talk emanating from their locker room will turn out to be an empty bag of hot air.
“I definitely think we’re a playoff team,’’ cornerback Buster Skrine said after the Miami game.
From across the room, receiver Brandon Marshall said: “I think we are a playoff team. It takes a lot of time, a lot of chemistry. So you’re seeing a lot of ups and downs, but we also know that we’re capable of getting the job done. The mission now is to maintain the momentum that we created today, and just be consistent.”
Show us.
Show us that the defensive effort that stymied the Miami offense so badly the Dolphins fired their offensive coordinator on the flight back to South Florida after the game, was not simply a decent defense taking advantage of a dysfunctional offense.
Keep Odell Beckham Jr. from beating you Sunday the way Victor Cruz did in 2011, the last time the Jets and Giants played each other in the regular season. The Jets were 8-6 and in the playoff chase entering that game, in which Cruz’s 99-yard catch-and-run touchdown put a dagger through the Jets’ hearts, effectively ending their playoff hopes.
For the Giants, the win propelled them to a Super Bowl title.
There are only nine players remaining on the current Jets roster who played in that game. Cornerback Antonio Cromartie is one of them, though he insisted on Monday he doesn’t have much recollection of that game.
Asked what he remembers, Cromartie said, “Nothing, to be honest with you,’’ which did not sound like a very honest answer.
“We lost the game.’’
At least he remembered that.
The Jets cannot afford to lose more than another game, maybe two. Nothing worse than 9-7 is getting into the playoffs and 10-6 will likely be needed.
“We know we’re still in it,’’ quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick said Monday. “We also know there’s not a lot of room for error. Each one of these games, as we continue to win, they become more and more significant in terms of putting ourselves in position to make the playoffs.
“I’m glad that we got back to playing our brand of football [Sunday], but I don’t think the confidence has wavered at all this year in terms of the team that we think that we have.’’
Show us.