The Jets power on, heads down, eyes staring straight ahead as if oblivious to their sorry plight as the laughingstock of the NFL.
They power on, somehow believing that elusive first win of the season is waiting for them the next time they walk onto the football field.
The Jets take their NFL-worst 0-11 record back to a (thankfully) empty MetLife Stadium on Sunday and play a 6-5 Raiders team not only desperate for a win to stay alive in the AFC wild-card playoff race but surely angry at being shellacked 43-6 by the Falcons last Sunday in Atlanta.
Just the Jets’ luck: Playing an opponent that’s both desperate and angry.
Not exactly the perfect formula for ending an 11-game 2020 skid and the looming embarrassing prospect of becoming only the third team in NFL history to go 0-16.
Nor was the mea culpa white flag Jets coach Adam Gase seemingly raised up the pole Thursday when he publicly copped to his most damning sin since being hired — denouncing the job he’s done developing quarterback Sam Darnold.
All of this figures to add up to a 12th consecutive loss this season for the Jets, further enhancing their dogged march toward the No. 1-overall pick in the draft and a chance at making Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence the latest hope as their next Namath.
Really, who expects the Jets to beat the Raiders Sunday?
Or the 8-3 Seahawks next Sunday in Seattle?
Or the 7-4 Rams the week after that in LA?
Or the 8-3 Browns or 5-6 Patriots to finish the season?
Still, amid the darkness of this season, when you speak to those involved with the Jets — coaches and players — they sound like they’re still bent on improving. It’s surely a defense mechanism, a way to deflect the disappointment from all the losing.
“Obviously, losing sucks, but we’ve just got to continue to come in here every single day and put our best foot forward and go to work,’’ Darnold said.
“You just never know when it’s going to happen,’’ linebacker Jordan Jenkins said of finally breaking through and getting that first win, “so you’ve got to keep trying.’’
Asked by The Post on Friday if there’s any way to draw any fun out of this season gone bad, Gase said, “I think the most enjoyable part of my day is when the players are around.’’
Gase said when the team “had to go virtual two weeks ago’’ for meetings because of new COVID-19 protocols, “we didn’t see the players, except at practice [and] I don’t think any of us enjoyed that.’’
“At least when we’re around each other the whole day and you’re kind of amping up for practice and then you get out to practice and now you’re fully amped up and everybody’s ready to go,’’ Gase said. “These guys help, especially our coaching staff, of focusing on getting them better, they bring good energy to practice, they compete hard in practice. These guys make kind of all the other stuff go away, because you’re so focused on trying to help these guys.’’
Gase knows he has five games remaining as Jets head coach, very possibly five games remaining as an NFL head coach, because head coaches rarely get a third shot in the league. But he keeps his blinders on as if he’s got many more games to coach.
“For me personally, I’ve been doing this type of job since I was 18 years old [and] I don’t know anything else,’’ Gase said. “Like, this is all I know. When things get hard, you have to just keep grinding, you’ve got to keep working, you’ve got to find ways to pull us out of this.’’
The problem is there is no pulling the Jets out of this right now.
Not until Gase is gone, a new head coach is hired and general manager Joe Douglas conducts a massive makeover of the roster by drafting well and spending as much of the $100 million or so the team has in salary cap space as he’s allowed by ownership.