NFL

Jets say they didn’t quit against 49ers

The truth can hurt. Really hurt.

So while there were denials and excuses of fatigue, there also was an admission in the Jets locker room Wednesday that the Gangrenous bunch did little to dispel assertions from San Francisco cornerback Carlos Rogers who suggested he saw a Jets team, particularly on defense, basically quit in Sunday’s 34-0 humiliation.

“It’s an embarrassing thing to have to even address it. But it’s hard to say he was out of line for saying it with the way we played out there,” linebacker Aaron Maybin said. “I really don’t have anything to say about it.”

But then Maybin did say, “We didn’t do too much on the field to prove otherwise.”

Kind of hard to argue that giving up 245 rushing yards in the game and 17 points in the fourth quarter are trademarks of a spirited group.

“It shows that people around the league know how the Jets play defense. We didn’t put that out there on Sunday, so it’s a motivation for us to get back to doing what we do,” said defensive end Mike DeVito, who said the team “definitely” took Rogers’ critique personally. “I mean you don’t take it as an insult; it’s more personally we’ve got to get back to doing what we’re doing because guys around the league know how we play … and we’ve got to get back to it.”

Some, including coach Rex Ryan, suggested fatigue became an issue. Valid point as the offense didn’t do a whole heckuva lot to keep the defense off the field.

“Did we get fatigued? I think we did. I think we wore down a little bit at the end of the game,” said Ryan, who insisted “as far as us quitting, there’s no way. That wasn’t the case. We got beat.”

“Fatigue? Maybe a little,” cornerback Yeremiah Bell said, “but there was no quit in us.”

That little four-letter word, quit, became one of yesterday’s hot topics, courtesy of Rogers.

“It kinda seemed like, after a while … they didn’t want to be out there,” Rogers said Tuesday on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “And after that it’s like, ‘Man, these guys don’t really want to play the game.’… It really kind of shocked me to see that them guys were ready to go get in the showers.”

Cue the denials.

“I don’t see anybody quitting on film,” linebacker David Harris said. “We just got outplayed, that’s all. Too many technical errors. They didn’t do too many things we haven’t seen before. They ran basic plays and they outplayed us. I didn’t see it…I just know the guys we have in this locker room, we never quit no matter what the score is.”

Even a 34-0 cliffhanger.

“I’m not going to get offended by what a guy says about our team. They beat us pretty handily,” Bell said. “He says what he says. We see it and move on. I know as a defense we didn’t quit.”

And from the offense — “I could care less,” guard Brandon Moore said of Rogers’ comments.

fred.kerber@nypost.com