HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. – Six weeks after being placed on injured reserve with yet another concussion, the veteran Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet announced his retirement yesterday.

Chrebet, whose 580 catches rank second to Don Maynard’s 627 on the team’s all-time list, hopes to join his teammates on the field for their final two games.

The Jets placed Chrebet on injured reserve on November 7, one day after he suffered at least the seventh concussion of his career in a loss to San Diego.

“Some days you wake up and you don’t feel like anything’s changed,” Chrebet said, his lips quivering and eyes watering. “And then your team is playing on TV and it hits you in the gut and makes it tough. Just accepting it and not fighting it – it’s not a fight I can win right now. I’m not going to get back on the field. I think everybody’s aware of that.”

Chrebet signed with the Jets as an undrafted free agent out of Hofstra in 1995. Though he was undersized at 5-foot-10, he quickly became a clutch possession receiver, working his way up the team record charts.

He would go across the middle, making big third-down conversions, just about everything anyone ever asked of him. His hard work and everyman persona endeared him to Jets fans, who bought his no. 80 jerseys in bulk.

“When you come in the stadium now, that’s all you see is the no. 80 jersey there,” receiver Laveranues Coles,one of his closest friends on the team, said.”It’s difficult knowing he’s not ever going to come out of the tunnel with me again.”

The decision to walk away was difficult and painful. Chrebet had a series of head injuries that plagued him the last three seasons. He had a post-traumatic migraine early in the 2003 season and missed the final eight games that season with post concussion syndrome.

He considered retiring, but instead came back last season. Chrebet played in all 16 games, but sustained a mild concussion in the regular-season finale against St. Louis. Though he knew the risks, he came back for 2005, knowing one more hit would mean the end.

It happened against the Chargers on – what else – a clutch third-down play that got the Jets a first down. He stayed down on the field for several minutes, with a scary, glazed look in his eyes. Chrebet remembers waking up the next morning and seeing how calm his wife,Amy, and his sister were. He knew something was wrong.

“I asked them, ‘Have you talked to the doctors?’ ” he said. “They’re like, ‘Yeah.’ Do you know something I don’t know? And they’re like, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘So I’m done?’ And my wife was like, ‘Yeah.’ “

Chrebet said he is feeling fine. He spends his days with his two sons, 5-year-old Lukas and 3-year-old Cade.

“There was nothing like game day for me,” Chrebet said. “I’m hoping to find something to replace that feeling. I don’t think there ever will be. I would pay so much just for my friends and family to run out of the tunnel one day, to know what it feels like to drive to a game with the music on, you see everybody with the jersey on, hearing the Jets chant, being the center of that, it’s been the greatest 11 years of my life. It’s a shame that it’s over.”