FOXBORO — When Rex Ryan strode to the dais on Wednesday, he brought with him a box of Kleenex.

For the coach that, for a change, is making more headlines this week for his blubbering than his bluster, it was a way of poking fun at himself for the tear-filled Monday team meeting that followed his New York Jets’ loss to Jacksonville the day before.

After getting off to a 3-0 start, and even before his first season at the helm of the Jets began, the rookie head coach seemed to have all the answers — and wasn’t afraid to say it either.

He made a comment that came off as an insult to Bill Belichick, he got into a war of words with Dolphins’ linebacker Channing Crowder, he boasted about the strength of his team’s defense and even was among those calling rookie first-round draft pick Mark Sanchez the “Sanchise.” Then there’s the infamous voicemail to Jets’ season ticket holders.

But now, with his team reeling after losing five of its last six games, could Rex Ryan actually be humbled?

It seems so.

On his conference call with Patriots’ media members on Wednesday, Ryan still cracked jokes, but he didn’t seem so cocksure. He did say that New York expects to win this Sunday — noting that his club beat the Patriots in their first meeting — but it didn’t have quite the same tone that it did a few weeks ago, when Ryan and the Jets were declaring Week Two their Super Bowl and celebrating afterwards as though a ring ceremony were to follow a few weeks later.

The Jets’ swagger, which they derived from the coach whose mouth was as big as his waistline a few weeks ago, has been reduced as they’ve staggered.

“It depends on what the definition of swagger is,” Ryan said when asked about the lack of noise coming from New York’s New Jersey training facility and aimed at New England. “I’ll say this: we believe in each other. I know we believe in ourselves. We believe in each other and if that’s swagger or whatever…you know, we expect to win. That’s all I’m going to say. We expect to win every game. It hasn’t gone away in five of these last six weeks. But we’re daring to be great.”

Ryan’s belief that his team is greater than its 4-5 record would show is what brought him to tears on Monday as he talked with his team after yet another close loss, this one to a Jekyll-and-Hyde Jaguars squad.

He didn’t intend for the emotional outburst to become public knowledge, but he made no apologies for it either, saying that it wasn’t contrived.

“That’s just straight from my heart. Anybody that’s ever been around me knows that’s the way I am. You can ask people in Baltimore (where he served as defensive coordinator before taking over the Jets) and the team. It’s just that it’s never got out before,” Ryan said. “I’m like that. I’m an emotional guy. I’m a passionate person, but my main message is that I came here to be a champion and I believe in myself and I believe in this football team.”

Laughing that he doesn’t remember many quotes, he does remember one from boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, who said, “To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.”

“I think that fits us,” Ryan said. “Nobody else does right now, but we believe in each other.”

The coach was not able to pinpoint on reason for the Jets’ losses. One week, at home against Miami, they gave up three return touchdowns, two on special teams and one a fumble recovery by Jason Taylor; another week, against the Bills, Sanchez threw five interceptions; the loss to the Dolphins in Miami came when the defense broke down at the end of the game.

Though he is the decision-maker for their divisional rivals, it has been reported that Ryan has reached out to Bill Parcells. Parcells is fond of saying that you are what your record says you are; while Ryan crowed that his team wouldn’t be pushovers and had chances to win each of the games it’s lost, he accepted that they are the sub-.500 team the standings say it is.

“We’re 4-5 and all that stuff, but maybe what might be different is that we believe in each other. I think that gives us some resolve and things,” he said. “We’re a confident football team. We have earned the 4-5 record like we’ve talked about. But we’re not going to tip-toe into any place to play.”

This time around, Ryan was more deferential of Belichick — though in his Week 2 pre-game voicemail he said Belichick was a better coach than he — and the Patriots.

He said his comment that he didn’t come to New York to kiss Belichick’s Super Bowl rings was taken out of context, and that he meant it as a compliment. And he said the Jets know they’re facing a “true champion team.”

So maybe losing has humbled Ryan a little bit.

“They said we’re going into a hornet’s nest and all that, but we beat them in Week Two. I thought we had the better team in Week Two. Obviously over the last month and a half, they’ve played much better than we have. But we’re going to find out who has the better team on Sunday,” he said. “We’re coming here to win.”

Or maybe it hasn’t at all.

smanza@projo.com