In short 12 months, Jets changed culture

Patriots loss was a “turning point” for the franchise.

“When you lose like that, you really sit down and look at it, like, ‘What are we doing that can be fixed? And what are we doing that we can easily change ourselves for the better of the program?’ ” Jenkins told the News on Thursday. “After a loss like that, you generally look in and you look yourself in the mirror and be like, ‘What am I doing? How can I be better for this team?’”

That self-evaluation, Jenkins said, was the first step toward the meaningful change he’s witnessed this season.

“This team’s just different, man,” Jenkins said. “We get along well. We don’t sell each other out. We don’t throw nobody under the bus. We all come together and we work together toward a common goal, and we might not have gotten the wins and have shot ourselves in the foot a couple times, but this isn’t the team that branches out and separates when times get hard.”

Bowles deserves credit for turning around the attitude in his building. The third-year coach has enjoyed that process.

“It excites me to coach these guys and see how hard they play,” Bowles said this week.

Bowles, though, doesn’t view this return to Gillette Stadium as a more meaningful marker of progress.

“It’s not really going back to Foxborough, it’s just going over all season,” Bowles said. “We’ve changed and we’ve stayed together as a group and a team and gone through adversity and success together. It’s just a credit to the guys working together.”

Veteran running back Matt Forte, along with Jenkins, is one of a handful of contributing players who remained on the Jets roster after last season. He’s experienced the culture change from start to finish and voiced similar sentiments to Jenkins.

Forte believes the Jets have made strides to “create a culture and create a standard that nobody’s supposed to dip below and just create a culture of professionalism in everything you do.”

“We’re building something here, and it takes time to grow,” Forte added. “A lot of people in this time and era look at it like it’s a microwave where you put something in for two minutes and — bang — it’s ready. But when you want to grow something great or do something beyond expectations, it’s going to take time to grow that.”

Jenkins looks back on the last year and “feels good” about the progress, as well as where the team is headed.

“I take the upmost pride in it,” Jenkins said. “How we look out there is a reflection of everyone it’s not just one person. It’s a reflection of yourself, it’s a reflection of the name on the back of the jersey, it’s a reflection of this organization.

“We put too much work in to not be professional while we’re out there and to let squabbles and to let stuff off the field influence what we do on the field. We haven’t had any of the issues like that (this year).”