With a rather large issue off his plate, Jets general manager Mike Maccagnan began to look ahead Monday but declined to put expectations on the 2018 team.

Coming off back-to-back 5-11 seasons, Maccagnan said there has been no mandate from ownership with regard to a deadline when the Jets must make the playoffs — but he believes the organization is headed in the right direction.

“I don’t want to sit here and say, ‘We are this,’ or, ‘We are that.’ It’s going to work itself out over time,” Maccagnan said Monday at the Jets facility, hours after finally signing Sam Darnold. “Our vision is to build a team that can be competitive for the playoffs year in and year out. I think we have a lot of good, young players. I think we’re in excellent cap shape going forward. Hopefully that will set us up for success possibly this year and into the future.”

As the Jets continue to chase their first postseason appearance since since 2010 — when they lost to the Steelers in the AFC Championship — Maccagnan has been building a young core largely through the draft.

Since he took over as GM in 2015, Maccagnan has picked potential building blocks like defensive end Leonard Williams (in 2015), linebackers Jordan Jenkins and Darron Lee (in 2016) and safeties Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye (in 2017). The young core did not go unnoticed despite a challenging season last fall, he said.

“Honestly, after this season, one of the things I always remember talking about with my friends on other teams that we played was how hard we played, how physical we played,” Maccagnan said. “A lot of those were young guys that were in there and chemistry started to develop and we felt very good about. It’s kind of carried over into this spring. Time will tell how good or bad we are.”

One pick that went the opposite direction was quarterback Christian Hackenberg, the 51st-overall selection in 2016, who was cut this spring without having played a single regular-season snap and is currently without a job.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say it would be a successful pick since it didn’t really turn out the way we ideally wanted it,” Maccagnan said in his first remarks about Hackenberg’s departure. “I think any time you make a pick … you always see potential and risk.”