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The Jets conducted a funeral at their training facility yesterday, and it was a happy one.
In what was easily one of the most creative, powerful motivational moments of the Rex Ryan era, Ryan gathered his players around a small dirt hole in the ground on their practice field and buried the game ball from Monday night’s 45-3 loss to the Patriots.
The symbolic gesture had the players, standing in the morning chill, rapt in silence.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” backup quarterback Kellen Clemens said. “It hit home. There was obviously some symbolism to it as far as just burying [the loss] and never having to deal with it again. He got his message across.
“The reason why Rex is respected so much is because he’s so passionate and he wears it on his sleeve. The message he wanted to get across was received by everyone and now we’re moving on to Miami. You can’t let a game like that happen twice.”
The Jets as a team didn’t watch film of the Monday night massacre, though some players said they watched it on their own.
Ryan’s words to the players were, “Just forget about it. Forget about this game. We’re burying this game and what happened Monday night and let’s move forward.
“The big thing is you learn from this,” Ryan said yesterday. “We know what happened. That’s gone. We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking ahead.”
The players had no idea what was going on when Ryan halted the weekly Wednesday team meeting and had everyone follow him outside.
“He told us to go outside and we were all saying, ‘What are we doing? Going on a field trip or something?’ “ cornerback Darrelle Revis said. “The hole was right there, already dug, there with the dirt on the side and he threw the ball in the hole. It was a funeral for a game ball. That might be the best I ever saw, I never seen a coach do that.
“You usually hear a coach say, ‘Let’s bury this game.’ Rex actually buried it. Everybody was in shock. Nobody said anything.”
Tackle Wayne Hunter said Ryan’s message was: “Forget about that game and I don’t want to hear anything about it anymore. Forget everything and move on to Miami.
“He told us to go to our [individual position] meetings and he stayed out there with the shovel and finished burying it. It was pretty inspirational, pretty powerful. It was real symbolic. It really illustrated how much we needed to forget about what happened.”
Give this to Ryan: He’s got an innovative, mind that works beyond the limits of exotic blitz packages.
“It sent the right message to us: ‘Don’t forget how this felt, but the game’s over. We’re burying this. It’s never going to happen again,’ ” left guard Matt Slauson said.
This was not the first time Ryan has used an interesting prop. Last week, he pulled out a magazine with his wife’s picture in a full-page ad to show that he, like Tom Brady, is married to a supermodel.
Leading up to the Week 10 game against Cleveland, Ryan entered one of his press conferences dressed as his brother, Rob — the defensive coordinator for the Browns — wearing a long-haired wig and a pillow under a brown shirt. Last season, after The Post broke a story about Ryan becoming so passionate during one team meeting that he worked himself into tears, Ryan came to his next press conference armed with a box of tissues.
This, however, was Ryan’s greatest prop, one that could help the Jets right themselves for these final four games after everything that went wrong in New England.
“[Ryan] wanted to reinforce how we treat what happened and what our next step is as a team,” defensive tackle Sione Pouha said. “He could have said it verbally, but he wanted to reinforce it visually. Everybody got the message.”
mcannizzaro@nypost.com