A final chance for fans to salute Rex

IT WAS love at f irst sight for Rex Ryan and Jets fans, the big, bawdy, tough-talking coach, a Jets fan just like them once, their Rexterminator coming for Bill Belichick. Even though four straight years out of the playoffs and this current 3-11 nightmare has led to the impending divorce, he thanks them from the bottom of his heart, and vows to try his darndest to give them one lasting memory Sunday against the Patriots in his last home game as their coach.

Ryan hasn’t gotten mushy in front of his team about this not-so-Merry Rexmas, doesn’t want any sympathy or sentimentality from anyone. But when you ask him what he would like to say to Jets fans now, at the end of six roller-coaster seasons, it is easy to see how much being their coach meant to him.

“Shoot, Irespect them beyond belief, and I think part of it is ’ cause I grew up … I was just like them, just one of th e m ,” Ryan told The Post. “I think that’s big. And obviously I was given an unbelievable opportunity that every Jet fan would jump at, they would have loved to have been the head coach of this team as well, their team, and I think I was given that opportunity.

“But I respect the heck out of ’ em, I appreciate ’ em, they’ve been there. I’ve actually made calls, and they’ve been there.

“And I felt like they supported me from the day that I took this job.”

He was Teflon Rex when Woody Johnson gave him a stay of Rexecution and replaced general manager Mike Tannenbaum with John Idzik. He did the job in 2009 and ’10, and again last season with a rookie quarterback and no offensive playmakers, but this season has been a veritable butt-fumble, and there are no mulligans left for him, nor should there be. His time is up, and everyone knows it. Including him.

But just because Sunday is Penalty Flag Day, when yellow towels blaring “Attention Woody, Fire Idzik! Clean House!” will be waving for the owner to heed, doesn’t mean that disenchanted Jets fans shouldn’t call a timeout and give Ryan an ovation, standing or otherwise, for the good times he gave the franchise, even if they seem like a distant memory. He gave them everything he had, always.

“He deserves their respect,” receiver Jeremy Kerley said. “He’s the Coach of the Year to me, every time he goes out there he pours his heart out.

“A standing ovation, I think that’d be everything for him.”

Ryan wants this one in the worst way. His players want it in the worst way. For themselves first. But for their coach as well.

“He takes it to a different level when it comes to the Patriots, you know,” safety Calvin Pryor said. Once more, with feeling. “He’s real f ired up, he’s passionate about playing against these guys, you can hear it in his voice,” Kerley said.

What did he say Wednesday that resonated?

“It’s that game,’” Kerley said. “Throw out the records, it doesn’t matter. It’s the Jets against the Patriots.’”

Unfortunately for Ryan, he can’t throw out the records.

“We owe these guys, man,” Pryor said. “We gave ’ em the game last time. They know it and we know it.”

Ryan was never Belichick, but at least he never kissed his rings.

“I might be the only one that had the guts to say something about it, but that’s how I am, that’s how I feel this week too,” Ryan said.

Ryan recognized that the last meeting — Patriots 27, Jets 25 — was his last chance to turn around a season ruined mostly by the play of his quarterback and the performance of his GM.

“It’s kind of sad the position Rex is in right now,” Darrelle Revis said from his Island off Foxborough.

“Like Revis said, you do got to feel for him, man,” Sheldon Richardson said. “It’s just tough being in a situation where [Dec. 28] might be his last coaching job coaching here, especially ’cause he loves it here.”

Ryan will l e ave ’em laughing on his way out the door, joking that he couldn’t bear to watch the TV copies of Tom Brady’s recent F-bomb flurry.

“To be honest with you, I couldn’t watch all of a game — I was offended by the language I saw,” Ryan deadpanned. “I’m thinking, ‘Boy, that fine’s got to really be hefty, because that’s one, two, three, four, five of those bad boys, I think. I couldn’t even get through the game.”

Richardson has a sense for how Jets fans feel about Ryan.

“Most people love him, some people hate him,” Richardson said. “Just the way it is.”

It would be nice if, for one fleeting moment Sunday, the ones who love him are heard above the ones who hate him.

“It’s gonna be a lot of great times in the near future for Jet fans, I truly believe that,” Ryan said.

For Rex Ryan, that future will have to be Sunday.