You wouldn’t be wrong in saying the honeymoon for Adam Gase has been short, except for the fact it’s actually been nonexistent.
You might recall the sky falling on the Jets’ Florham Park training facility just three weeks ago after they had skidded to 1-7 as a result of becoming the tanking Dolphins’ first victims.
Yet here we are this week with Gase’s 3-7 Jets having a chance to win three consecutive games for the first time in three seasons when they play the 6-4 Raiders on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
The Jets have that chance because their embattled head coach kept the locker room from fracturing at 1-7, when it appeared the walls inside their complex were crumbling.
“The walls are always crumbing in New York; that’s just the way it is, but I don’t think he bought into all the attention that went on outside the building,’’ veteran left tackle Kelvin Beachum told The Post on Thursday.
“His positivity and his tenacity really helped guide us through a lot of things,’’ center Jonotthan Harrison told The Post. “Yes, we’re nowhere near where we want to be right now, but he’s definitely helping us move in the right direction.’’
So what if the “right direction’’ has come thanks to wins over the 2-8 Giants and 1-9 Redskins? The turbulent seas around the Jets have been calmed for the moment, and Gase should be credited for his role in doing that by staying the course without panicking.
If we’re going to skewer a coach for losing the locker room, then we have to credit him for keeping it together in the face of losing seven of the first eight games.
“I’ve spent some time with him one-on-one and Adam holds himself accountable,’’ running back Ty Montgomery told The Post. “To see how hard he is on himself, you can tell [the losing] really hurt him. When you can see as a player that it gets to your coach like that, it rallies us.
“You can tell it means something to him. He cares. He really cares. That trickles down to the players.’’
Beachum said Gase “provided a level of resolve’’ to the team, adding, “He didn’t really flinch or hesitate with the adversity.’’
Jets fans understandably are sick and tired of the losing (no playoff berths since 2010) and Gase has become the latest punching bag, following a long line of them, the last being Todd Bowles and before that Rex Ryan, Eric Mangini and Herm Edwards.
As the Jets go through each season without reaching a Super Bowl, this is what happens to each head coach who’s hired: He bears the brunt of the fan frustration and somehow bears part of the blame for all of the losing that took place before he arrived.
It’s a rite of passage when you’re hired to coach the Jets.
Has Gase done a good job to date?
That remains debatable.
But, whether the Gase haters want to admit it or not, there have been mitigating circumstances — losing the team’s best defensive player (linebacker C.J. Mosley) for the season in the opener to a groin injury, losing quarterback Sam Darnold for three games to mononucleosis and having his revamped offensive line blow up in his face with injuries and poor play.
So, at the very least, Gase’s report card is incomplete and inconclusive through 10 games.
The question after Sunday’s win over the putrid Redskins, which followed the win over the scuffling Giants, losers of six in a row, is this: How do we grade this two-game winning streak?
As the saying goes, you can only play who’s on your schedule. Remember, some pundits had the Patriots going 16-0 after their 8-0 start, even though they’d beaten a bunch of the league’s weaklings along the way — before losing to the Ravens two-plus weeks ago.
To say the Jets have turned their season around with this two-game winning streak would be folly.
But winning — even against bad teams — does become habit. So maybe, just maybe, this is the start of a better, more productive final six games for the Jets.
“I definitely feel something building,’’ Harrison said.
A win over the Raiders, winners of their past three games, will go a long way toward validating the Jets’ past two wins over weaklings and tell us whether or not this modest winning streak has turned their season around.
“Any time you win, it brings positivity back to the organization,’’ linebacker Brandon Copeland said. “It reminds you what it feels like to do this [win]. It’s a feeling you want to continue to have. We’ll see if we can repeat it.’’
Yes. We will see.