FOXBORO — It’s easy to forget, after all the harsh words and soft play, that the Jets started this.

In Week 3, they pantsed the Patriots 24-3, exposing them before a national audience on Thursday Night Football.

The Jets led wire to wire and rumbled for 133 rushing yards, more than the Pats had allowed in their first two games combined. By bullying their longtime tormentors, the Jets extended an invite to the rest of the league to do the same.

Since then, Patriots opponents have rushed for 176 yards per game, and allowed an average of 82. Numbers like those are precisely why Jerod Mayo called his team soft, not to mention the special teams mishaps that have dotted the Pats’ ongoing six-game losing streak.

And now, licking their own wounds at 2-5, the Jets are back.

Just as the Jaguars did, there is no doubt Aaron Rodgers and Co. see Sunday as a get-right game, and the Patriots as a trampoline wheeled out to spring them back up the standings.

Here’s a suggestion: screw that.

If the Patriots want to prove their toughness, start Sunday by punching the Jets in the mouth.

By scrapping, clawing and fighting.

By pushing back out of self-respect.

Out of pride.

Out of a rival’s spite, something that stuck in Foxboro even after Bill Belichick left.

“I’m sure a lot of young players are pretty neutral, but I’ve been here a while, and I still feel the same way,” Pats right tackle Mike Onwenu told me Wednesday. “It’s always ‘f— ’em.’ And (I) just go about it that way.”

New York Jets running back Breece Hall stiff-arms New England Patriots safety Kyle Dugger during the second quarter of a game at Gillette Stadium. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)

A year ago, the Jets ended the Belichick era in a fittingly cruel, snowy season finale. It marked their first win over the Patriots since 2015, a new era for an old rivalry. A new era subsequently dawned in New England, with Mayo replacing Belichick, and Eliot Wolf triggering a full-on rebuild.

In case you missed it, that rebuild is off to a rocky start.

The new culture appears to be cracking. Wolf has come under fire for allowing roster holes wider than the ones Belichick left, and Mayo is walking back comments faster than defenses are dog-walking his offensive line.

But upsetting the Jets — and maybe even forcing overtime — would temporarily freeze all of that. It would prove the Pats’ mettle. And it would demonstrate Mayo has maintained buy-in with players who professed they would run through a brick wall for him this summer, but have hardly stopped a runny nose since.

Mayo seems to sense the stakes. This is how he concluded his opening statement at Wednesday’s press conference: “The message for those guys is it’s all about the Jets, and we’re moving forward. Obviously, there’s a lot of noise out there, and I said, ‘We are what our record is, and we have to get better.’ That ultimately is my responsibility. And look, I take all the blame, and it’s fine. It’s moving on to the Jets.”

How Patriots reacted to Bill Belichick’s criticism of Jerod Mayo

The Jets, by the way, über talented as they are after adding another Rodgers Super Friend last week in Davante Adams, appear plenty vulnerable.

They’ve already fired their head coach. They lost by 22 last weekend in Pittsburgh. Their only other win came at the expense of the 1-5 Titans. Right now, they rank 25th by DVOA.

The Jets have been fairly slated as seven-point favorites, but a loss Sunday would effectively end their season. Maybe the entire Aaron Rodgers experiment. The odds are slim, but the Pats can do it.

It takes no talent to stand up to a more talented team. Just competitive courage, grit and toughness. But if the Patriots lay down or take another loss on the chin, let it be known they’re worse than who we thought they were.

Because in late October, the NFL season always declares.

The contenders are known.

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The pretenders’ masks have been peeled back, if not ripped off entirely.

The rebuilding teams begin selling off pieces (looking at you, Titans and Raiders), though some inspire more hope than others.

Who will the Patriots be? How much hope should they inspire?

If the Jets win Sunday, New York will have conquered New England three straight times for the first time since the late ’90s, before more than half the Pats’ roster was born. We will live in a world where the Jets have legitimate bragging rights.

Can you live in a world like that?

Not all Patriots seem ready.

“It’s a rivalry game,” Onwenu told me. “It’s not just another game.”

No, it is not.