Trevor Pryce is a graybeard. Literally. There’s gray in his beard.
The Jets’ 6-foot-5, 290-pound defensive lineman is 35 years old and playing in his 14th NFL season, a career that has spanned 280 games.
When asked yesterday about the magnitude of his 281st career game — Monday night’s showdown against the Patriots in New England for supremacy in the AFC East and possibly in the entire conference — Pryce didn’t dance around the question with a wishy-washy answer.
“This game ranks as high as any game I’ve ever played,” he said. “It gets no bigger than this in the regular season.”
That was the buzz inside the Jets’ locker room as the players returned to work after a three-day hiatus following their Thanksgiving night win over the Bengals.
The players, in fact, spoke as if they wished the game were today, not days away.
“You can’t beat all the drama and subplots in the game,” right tackle Damien Woody, a former Patriot, said. “I would definitely say this is the most hyped regular-season game I’ve ever been a part of.”
Woody, in his 12th NFL season, took note of the perception that the Patriots are better than the Jets.
“You’ve got a lot of naysayers out there saying we haven’t played anybody, that we’ve gone to the wire against teams that don’t have winning records,” he said. “This is a big challenge and a big chance for us to make a statement playing against one of the upper echelon teams in the league.”
The Jets are taking utter delight in playing the underdog card this week. Just ask coach Rex Ryan.
“In general court of public opinion, are we the underdog? Absolutely. Do I think we’re the underdog? No, I think we’re going to win,” Ryan said.
“When you look at them and see they’re a good team, they’ve got Tom Brady and they’re on a roll. It’s easy to make that pick and say they’re the favorite,” Woody said. “I would say underdogs, but I think we kind of like being in that role.”
Despite the fact that the Jets beat the Patriots 28-14 in the second game of the season, the bookmakers have installed New England as a 3½-point favorite.
“It’s time to show people what we’re all about,” linebacker Bart Scott said. “The talking is what gets the spotlight on you, gets the attention on you. Now it’s time to show people why we were saying what we were saying. It’s time to put up. Now it’s all about the substance, and the substance is what we do on the football field.
“Anything short of a Super Bowl appearance is a failure, and we know that. We’re not getting excited about 9-2. We know 9-2 doesn’t mean anything, 9-2 doesn’t guarantee a spot in the Super Bowl, it doesn’t guarantee a spot in the playoffs. We won’t be satisfied until this thing is over and we’re raising the trophy.”
Ryan said the Jets “tried to build our team to win the Super Bowl.
“We thought to win a Super Bowl,” he said, “you have to beat New England.”
Woody, before the season began, told The Post in an interview that the road to the Super Bowl was going to have to travel through Foxborough, Mass.
“Look at where we are now,” Woody said yesterday. “We’ve got to go through Foxborough.”
Woody said he doesn’t “really care” about people’s perceptions about how the Jets got to 9-2, as if it’s a tainted 9-2 compared to the Patriots’ 9-2.
“Let everyone say we’re underdogs,” Woody said. “Do we believe it? No. We beat them once before and we feel we can do it again.”
The last time the Jets won the AFC East title was 2002. The last time they swept the Patriots in the season series was 2000.
“It’s going to be war, man,” linebacker Calvin Pace said. “We know them well, they know us. We’re not the best of friends, but this is going to be a fun game on a big stage.”
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cannizzaro
@nypost.com