JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Expect, not hope.

That is how the Giants move day-to-day, game-to-game.

“As we’ve been stacking the wins, a lot of guys are getting into that mode where we go into games and we expect to win, you know?’’ safety Xavier McKinney told The Post.

For too long, no one around the Giants really knew what that meant. There was no stacking much of anything, other than losses and frustration. Human nature being what it is, even the most optimistic and ardent Giants player could not go into each game thinking the best was yet to come when nearly every week the worst arrived at the doorstep.

Was it Randy Bullock’s 47-yard field goal sailing wide left as the clock ran out, allowing the Giants to escape Tennessee with a season-opening 21-20 victory, the impetus for what has transpired to make head coach Brian Daboll’s group the NFL’s greatest positive surprise? Has the resiliency to hang in games, shake off slow starts and produce fast finishes — the point totals in the four quarters go from 16 to 24 to 39 to 48 — allowed the Giants to believe that they will persevere, no matter what?

There is no doubt winning five of their first six games, heading into their meeting with the Jaguars at TIAA Bank Field on Sunday has done something to empower the team.

“We have that confidence within ourselves,’’ McKinney said. “It’s a confidence in the way we work, the way we prepare for these games that has us ready to go out there already in that mindset of, ‘All right, let’s go win,’ instead of, ‘Let’s go survive.’ We’re going in there for one reason, and that’s to win the game. That’s how we see it every week.’’

McKinney did not see it that way in his first two seasons with the Giants. He arrived as a second-round pick in 2020 after having been inundated with heaping amounts of success at Alabama. He was supposed to be a building block for Joe Judge, but that coaching gig lasted just two years, leaving McKinney 10-23 as an NFL player and sensing that a negative vibe was creeping into his innermost thoughts when it came time for kickoff.

“In the last couple of years as a whole that wasn’t really the mindset,’’ McKinney said. “We were going into games not really, just didn’t feel the sense of confidence. But now we have that confidence. We always played hard, but I think it always started from the top down. Now we got that click and we’re ready to go, every game.’’

Whatever that “click’’ is, the Giants want to keep it close to their hearts. They have found a formula — delicate, to be sure — for success, showing an ability to close out games on defense and save their best for last on offense. The ringleader is Daniel Jones, who has orchestrated fourth-quarter comebacks an NFL-high four times this season.

Jones mentioned he knows the Giants are a “tough group,’’ and he also pointed out a Daboll methodology that has triggered the desired results.

“He has preached competitive stamina,’’ Jones said. “It has been one of his things he’s talked about a lot through training camp even back to the spring. I think guys have really grabbed on to that.’’

Competitive stamina?

“Being able to compete for the whole game, for 60 minutes, regardless of what happens, regardless of the situation,’’ Jones said. “Being tough enough mentally and physically to compete for the whole game.’’

The next game that comes easy for the 2022 Giants will be the first. The Jaguars opened 2-1 for new head coach Doug Pederson — who knows the Giants well from his days with the Eagles — with a resounding 38-10 Week 3 trouncing of the Chargers, but since then there were losses to the Eagles, Texans and Colts. There is an assemblage of talent, though, starting with second-year quarterback Trevor Lawrence, solid running backs and a bevy of high draft picks along the defensive front.

These Giants expect to win. And if they lose, it will not be because they grew too full of themselves.

“Because we’ve been at the bottom, at the bottom of the bottom,’’ McKinney said. “We’ve hit rock bottom, so we know what it’s like to be down there, and a lot of guys don’t want us to go back down there. I know for damn sure I don’t.’’