Skeptics step aside please: The arrow is pointed up for the Jets.

Merry Christmas, Jets fans, even to those of you who prefer to poke holes in the team’s second-half resurgence — 5-2 since the 1-7 start wrecked their playoff hopes.

Skepticism is a perfectly understandable emotion. After all, exactly what have the Jets done in the franchise’s frustrating history to earn your trust?

So, you’re free to turn your nose up at five wins in the past seven games entering Sunday’s season finale in Buffalo with a chance to finish a respectable (for the Jets, who we grade on a curve) 7-9 because:

The surge is too little, too late, having come in garbage time, after all hope of making the playoffs was extinguished.

The five wins have come against a bunch of tomato cans — the Giants (4-11), Redskins (3-12), Dolphins (4-11), Raiders (7-8) and even the now-flailing Steelers (8-7) — teams with a combined current record of 26-49.

The unacceptable 22-6 loss to then 0-11 Bengals. Enough said there.

Still, though, it’s important to recognize that the Jets won those five games, some of which you expected them to lose (such as last Sunday when that Devlin Hodges pass hung in their air for an eternity before Jets safety Marcus Maye batted it away from Steelers receiver James Washington in the end zone at the end of the game).

When the Patriots were going 8-0 to start the season, the talk was not about the terrible teams they were beating, it was about whether they might be able to go undefeated.

OK, maybe a bad analogy, comparing the Jets and Patriots in the same sentence. But you get the point: Teams can only play the opponent in front of them.

And, if the Jets had started the season winning five of the first seven games, their fans wouldn’t have been so quick to poke holes in that 5-2 start by bellyaching about lack of style points and the weak opponents.

If the Jets are able to beat the Bills, who won’t play their starters the entire game since they cannot alter their playoff seeding, they’ll finish 7-9. If Jets fans were told at the start of the season that’s the record they’d finish with, what would the perception of the team be with Adam Gase in his first year as the coach, implementing entirely new offensive and defensive systems?

Obviously, 7-9 isn’t good enough. But remember, we’re grading the Jets on a curve considering that they’re in the process of a finishing a fourth consecutive losing season and haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010.

It’s important to consider, too:

The Jets lost quarterback Sam Darnold for three games (Weeks 2, 3 and 4) to mononucleosis.

They lost linebacker C.J. Mosley, the marquee offseason free-agent acquisition and a dynamic playmaker, essentially for the year in the season opener.

Ten different players have started on the offensive line, which has had eight different five-man combinations in 15 games.

Excuses?

Sure they are. But facts, too.

And remember: The Jets never have been the most stable of franchises in the league, so when you throw those complications into the pot, the stew can start to go bad pretty quickly.

So, if nothing else, the Jets deserve some modicum of credit for not turning 1-7 into 3-13. For whatever that’s worth.

The Jets have some young, ascending, talented players on the roster and, if they don’t screw it up this offseason by trading safety Jamal Adams or letting linebacker Jordan Jenkins walk or giving away running back Le’Veon Bell for a bag of used golf balls, they have a pretty good chance to end the nine-year postseason drought in 2020.

“This team has more wins than in my rookie year when we had (Darrell) Revis, Sheldon (Richardson), Leo (Williams), (Matt) Forte, Fitz (Ryan Fitzpatrick), Brandon Marshall,” Jenkins told The Post, referring to the 2016 team that went 5-11. “That was a star-loaded team, and right now we’ve got more wins than we had that year. We’ve had half the team hurt, with new faces everywhere.

“This team has overcome adversity. The second game in, you got the (Darnold) mono and before the first game (starting linebacker) Avery (Williamson) is out, and the first game C.J. goes down. I go down in the second game. Injuries on top of injuries, and we somehow managed to fight through it and keep stacking wins.”

What would 7-9 mean?

“It would show that this team didn’t quit,” Jenkins said. “Some teams, if they start out the season 1-7, they would have been done right there.”

What does it mean for 2020 and beyond?

“Win or lose (in Buffalo), one thing we did do when we were 1-7 was stay together as a group,” veteran receiver and team captain Demaryius Thomas said. “Me and Jamal are always talking about changing the culture and the core around here and stop being OK with what the Jets have been the last couple of years (translation: losers).

“I think you should be excited for next year that this is going in the right direction.”

Arrow pointed up.

For more on the Jets, listen to the latest episode of the “Gang’s All Here” podcast: