Todd Bowles doesn’t want 2-2 Jets to get overconfident

Bill Parcells used to say don’t eat the cheese. The comment was directed at his team after a big win so the big heads wouldn’t surface. Parcells had that magical way of playing mental games with his team.

Todd Bowles, who worked for Parcells, doesn’t play those games; he’s more direct in his approach with a team that’s exceeding low expectations.

“We were once a winless club and we know how that feels,” Bowles said Monday. “We’ve only won two games, we have nothing to get big headed about. We got a lot of work to do.”

The Jets lost a 10-point fourth-quarter lead Sunday against the Jaguars, but still won, 23-20, in overtime. It shows that they might have a resiliency that was not predicted.

Before the season, the Jets were projected to win three or four games, with many of the team’s fans hoping for an 0-16 season so they could get the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft.

But a funny thing happened along the way. After starting 0-2, the Jets upset the Dolphins in the home opener and followed with the win against the Jaguars to move within one game of first place in the AFC East.

Now the Jets take on a winless Browns team averaging only 15.8 points per game and allowing 26.8.

“We’re staying grounded because we’re still a team,” defensive end Leonard Williams said. “We’ve been rallying together as a team the last two games and we know where we started off and we know how we got to this point now.

“Knowing where we started and how the outside viewed us and how we viewed ourselves, that’s what helped us push for one another and I think that’s going to continue.”

One of the biggest keys to this season is chemistry. It’s easy to say there is chemistry when you’re winning, but last season the locker room was a mess. There was infighting between receiver Brandon Marshall and defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson. Marshall was released in the offseason and Richardson was traded to Seattle on Sept. 1.

“The chemistry is high as far as on the positive side,” quarterback Josh McCown said. “I felt that since I’ve been here, and we’ve done nothing to take away from that. It’s probably one of the better places for me that I’ve been in 15 years.”

The Jets have to make sure they don’t get caught up in the win streak. After the victory over the Jaguars, several players joshed with reporters about the 2-2 record, asking if they were surprised by it.

Bowles maintains that whatever the Jets do, it must be done together and humbly.

“We got to focus on the little things,” Bowles said. “We can’t get away with winning a lot of games making those mistakes in the second half. We got to clean up the little things and keep pushing forward and getting better.”

If the Jets win in Cleveland on Sunday, it’s another chance to put off any discussions regarding No. 1 overall picks, tanking, rebuilding, top quarterbacks or an unsettled future.

“We’ve talked about this,” McCown said. “We’ve said it all along, I think for us in the building, there’s an exterior narrative that goes out, and then there’s the story that we’re trying to tell and that we believe in and I do believe those are two different things. I think you have to be hiding under a rock to not know that. For those guys, whether it’s our position group or us as a collective unit . . . if that serves as motivation, so be it.”