Leonard Williams still remembers the empty flight home from Buffalo, the last regular-season game of his rookie season with the Jets, when Ryan Fitzgerald imploded with three interceptions in the fourth quarter and there would be no playoff berth. 

“It was just me thinking about like, ‘Wow, the season’s actually over’” Williams told The Post. “It was crazy ‘cause I felt like we were having such a good season and in my head I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re going to the playoffs.’ And for it to end that way was kinda sad. But at the same time because we did good, I didn’t think like that was gonna be my almost last opportunity of going to the playoffs in my career until now. Coach Dabs [Brian Daboll] talks about this a lot: it’s hard to win in this league and that goes to prove it. I’ve been in this league for so long and that was the last time I’ve been close to going to the playoffs.” 

Until now.

Until Saturday in Minnesota, when the Giants, with help, can end their five-year playoff drought with a win over the Vikings. 

Williams (Big Cat) was the sixth pick of the 2015 draft, and all these years later, at age 28, he is able to dare to dream championship dreams. 

“I think about that sometimes, like winning a championship in New York and like picturing a parade in the city and stuff like that, I can’t imagine how that would be,” he said.

But there are constant reminders from Daboll about focusing on the next minute instead of the next parade and parachuting down immediately from cloud nine. 

So Williams concludes: “But right now, I’m just trying to live in the moment.” 

It’s a moment that had eluded him in his four years under Todd Bowles, in his seven games in 2019 under Adam Gase before his trade to the Giants, in his eight games under Pat Shurmur, in his two seasons under Joe Judge. 

“Because I’ve been on the down side of it, the losing side of it and now being on the up side of it, I can definitely see the difference in the way the city treats you,” Williams said. “It’s cool, but at the same time, it’s like as much as you don’t like it when they talk bad about you, it’s kinda hard to, like, accept it when they start praising you, ’cause you know just as much as they praise you they can easily turn on you. So at the same time, I just try to pay attention to my guys in here.” 

His lost wilderness years have only made him hungrier for success.

“To be honest with you, it increases even more when you’ve been losing so much,” Williams said. “It’s almost like sometimes I feel like you would get more comfortable on a winning team ’cause you’re like so used to winning that it’s almost like you feel like it might be the program, or the coaches or whatever the case may be that’s the reason for winning, so you can kinda get a little more comfortable and lax as a player, where it’s like we’ve been losing, so we’re like we put so much pressure on us to like, ‘We have to do this, we have to do this to get out out of this gutter, to get out of this hole, and to be playoff contenders one day.’

“Fortunately, it looks like we’re gonna be able to have a chance, and we gotta just make sure we finish the season strong.” 

Williams had played 114 consecutive games before a sprained MCL forced him to miss his first NFL game Week 3 against the Cowboys. Then he missed the Eagles game with a neck injury before returning for Sunday night’s victory over the Commanders. 

“I’m not 100 percent,” Williams said. “Definitely was banged up a little bit, but I feel like that’s almost the majority of the league right now, and that’s what we harp on a lot about it being December football. We know how much of a tough person and player you have to be to keep going near the end of the season like this ’cause a majority of the league is banged up. It’s not an excuse, it’s not anything like that.” 

He is a man of immense pride who fought through a painful triceps injury last December for fear of letting his brothers down. 

“This is my first time ever like being on a sideline while I’m like seeing guys in pads on the field,” Williams said. “It’s definitely like a weird experience. But I’ve been dealing with it, I’ve been managing it. Everybody has adversity at times, and that’s something I’ve been dealing with this year, and I’m trying to make the best of my situations.”

Williams recovered a key fourth-quarter fumble against the Commanders. “We tried to say it wasn’t a playoff game ’cause obviously it wasn’t,” he said. “Whether we won or lost we were gonna have games after. But at the same time the atmosphere felt like it, the way the teams were playing and we knew how much was at stake, so even though we say it wasn’t a playoff game, it definitely felt like one.” 

Not that he would know, of course. They tried to say it wasn’t a playoff game because — this is a recording, a Brian Daboll recording — only the next game is the most important game. That drubbing from the Eagles? Just one game, move on. 

“I think it’s also an example of why Coach Dabs tells us to keep it in here,” Williams said. “That’s all outside noise. It’s an outside-noise thing to say like, ‘Are they gonna be able to come off of this loss?’ Or, ‘Are they getting too high after a win?’ when really we know that we’re keeping the same exact routine every week. Granted you feel better after a win and you feel down after a loss, but we try to wash it and move on.” 

Williams enjoyed a breakout 2020 season (11.5 sacks) and was rewarded with a three-year, $63 million deal. He is one of 10 captains. His future is murky because GM Joe Schoen converted $17.88 million of his fully guaranteed $19 million salary into a signing bonus while adding a void year in 2024. His base salary for next season is $18 million. 

“I‘ve never been a fan of wanting to be like a vet and like jump to a team that is like Super Bowl contenders, almost like bandwagon-jumping type of thing,” he said. “It wouldn’t feel as good to me.” 

What a Christmas present this would be for Leonard Williams.