Will McDonald remembers what Jets head coach Robert Saleh shouted into the phone from the team’s war room on draft night. 

“I think he said, like, ‘Game Wrecker’ or something like that,” McDonald, the Jets’ first-round pick (15th overall) this spring, said. 

If you can’t draft someone to protect your quarterback from a Game Wrecker, you pivot to someone who can wreck the game for the opposing quarterback. 

Saleh will be sending out waves of fresh-legged frontline defenders with designs on meeting at the quarterback this season, and Jets fans got their first up close and personal look at the rookie defensive end who has already given them hope he can join Quinnen Williams and emerging Jermaine Johnson as a prized member of the Game Wrecker Club. 

“Gotta make sure that I’m playing up to my standard, obviously,” McDonald told The Post before the Jets’ preseason game against the Buccaneers on Saturday night. “I don’t really have expectations coming from other people, but I got expectations coming from myself.” 

They are Great Expectations. 

“Just being like an impact like every other down to where they gotta put all eyes on you at one point so that you can get others free, you know, one-on-ones,” he said. “Having like an impact on the game could definitely help out the defense ’cause I feel like everybody on the defense can make an impact.” 

McDonald, 6-foot-4, 240 pounds of unmoored clay, has earned plaudits for his freakish bend turning the corner. 

“I’m not the biggest. I’m not fast, but I’m quick,” McDonald said. “I just look at it like, ‘It’s me and you, you ain’t no better than me.’ I don’t really care how long you been in the league, who you went against … ’cause like at the end of the day, everybody’s different, everybody got a different play style. I just think the way you prepare yourself and the way you prepare mentally from the starting point from when you started playing football, you already had that mentality. 

“So my mentality is just to kill the man in front of me. Honestly, just try to embarrass him to be honest.” 

By no means is McDonald boastful, he’s just simply supremely confident in his abilities to sack the quarterback in his rookie season. 

“I want to get 10-plus, but I don’t really want to say too much, I can only go by actions,” he said. 

The veterans have taken the likeable young lion under their wings, stressing next-play mentality at a time when pass rusher Carl Lawson has been sidelined with a back injury. 

“[John Franklin-Myers], he recognized that every time that I mess up on a play or something, I’ll clap my hands,” McDonald said. 

None other than Aaron Rodgers offered advice when McDonald asked him at practice Thursday how he knew he was dropping into coverage. 

“He said, ‘You gotta learn how to listen, and think, and play fast,’ ” McDonald said. “So that’s one thing that I took from him so that’s gonna be one thing that I work on.” 

McDonald knows he’s not at Iowa State anymore. 

“In college,” McDonald said, “you can mess up here and there, but like in the league you gotta like be on point. You gotta be spectacular in everything that you do.” 

He has tried to replicate the outside spin move Carolina’s Brian Burns showed off during the joint practice with the Panthers. 

“I watch him, Von Miller, Maxx Crosby … I watch Maxx Crosby the most,” he said. “That’s who I got the spin from. I just put a little bit on it, like from my play style, just added some quirks to it.” 

Before games, McDonald likes to listen to the singer Verzache, and a song called “January.” 

“It’s like a cool, mellow vibe,” he said. 

It gives him peace. 

“I like peace in my life, like I listening to rain sounds in my headphones,” McDonald said. “I always like to have my mind clear. I just like to live day by day, I don’t really like to think about too much.” 

Even when he takes the field. 

“I like to be in my same mental state all day, 24-7,” McDonald said. 

McDonald currently wears 99, which once belonged to The New York Sack Exchange’s Mark Gastineau. 

“I want to get like my own number, and make a legacy about it … seemed like he already made his legacy,” McDonald said. 

The legacy of a Game Wrecker.