The end was a study in melancholy, of what might have been, of what never seems to be for the Jets. Normally, for instance, shutting up a partisan crowd is as viscerally pleasing as the sport allows: stuff those yellow towels in your pockets, folks, shut your mouths, take your hoarse, scratchy voices back to the parking lot …

… of course, normally, shutting up a crowd like that happens many miles from home, in a strange city, in an unfamiliar stadium, not in your own house. We’ll be generous and say that only half the announced crowd of 78,523 was wearing the black-and-gold vestments of the Steelers. It was still surreal seeing such a wholesale invasion.

Normally, when you take out a playoff team in Week 16 it means there’s something in it for you. The Steelers came in and only had their season to play for: as it turned out once the Titans lost in Nashville, a win would’ve clinched a postseason spot for Pittsburgh. Now they face a do-or-die Week 17, and they trudged off the field racked with disappointment …

… and the Jets went flying off the field, fired up by holding off the Steelers, 16-10, fired up by winning their fifth game in their past seven tries, fired up by a 5-3 record for the year at MetLife Stadium, first winning season at home in the past four. It wouldn’t be until later that they’d concede the feeling was fleeting. The season will end for them next week in Buffalo, even if they exact revenge on the Bills for Week 1. It was a humbling reality.

“We’re not all that far away,” quarterback Sam Darnold said.

“We’re not going to the playoffs and that hurts,” Robby Anderson said. “But we’re building a lot of momentum for next year.”

“This is a stepping stone,” Jamal Adams said. “We want to be in the playoffs and that’s not going to happen and I hate that. But we have to let it carry over into next season.”

There were actually more Jets fans in the house than you might have expected, certainly more than the Jets thought, since they pumped fake noise into practice midweek in an effort to show what a MetLife-to-Heinz-Field transfusion might seem like. The offense started with silent counts, then switched to cadence since they could actually hear each other.

Still: this wasn’t what anyone wants playing a home finale in the season’s penultimate week. You want to be carried by your fans, not win in spite of them. The Jets, of course, have no one to blame for any of that other than themselves; at 1-7, perhaps the most benevolent thing circulating in the heart of their fans was dumping off their tickets.

Still: given what could have been, this is about as perfect a game as the Jets could have asked. At this point, they seek small, positive steps. The winning home record is a small step. The 5-2 mark since 1-7 is a small step. Postponing Pittsburgh’s party is a small step. Sam Darnold playing a mostly positive game (16-for-26, one TD, no picks) was a small step. Le’Veon Bell grinding out 72 yards was a small step, which he took wearing a Steelers-gold sweatshirt for his pre- and postgame garb

“I didn’t play any harder this game than other games,” Bell insisted. “Guys over there respect me and I respect them, and it was fun competing against guys I used to play with.”

And the Jets competed. They dominated the first half before letting the Steelers score 10 points after the two-minute warning. They dominated the second half, scored a tack-on field goal when they desperately needed points late in the fourth quarter, and twice muffled the Steelers in guarding a 16-10 lead.

That score provided a chance for an awful kind of symmetry. It was in Week 1 when the Jets led the Bills 16-0 after three quarters before Buffalo stunned them, 17-16. And 17-16 is what the Jets were staring at if they couldn’t keep the Steelers out of the end zone. But on third down, Marcus Maye knocked away what looked, for a second, to be a 44-yard scoring strike from Devlin “Duck” Hodges to James Washington.

The yellow towels were stuffed in the pockets of the Steelers fans. They took their hoarse, scratchy voices back to the parking lots with them. The Jets fans among them appreciated their small victory.

“It was a playoff atmosphere,” Adams said.

But not a playoff game. The feel-good felt good. But also had its limits.

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