EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Dressed in gray jacket and tie and carrying a small black travel bag in his left hand, Tom Coughlin was on the march out of MetLife Stadium, his house, while New York Giants fans called out to him as if he were still one of their own.

Nice going, Tom. ... Welcome back, Coach. ... Good luck this season, Tom. ... We'll always miss you, Coach.

Coughlin nodded and thanked them all as he headed for the Jacksonville Jaguars' bus, the winners' bus, passing a wall on the left carrying the images of the Giants' Super Bowl trophies.

"Two of those are yours," a reporter told him.

"Yeah," Coughlin said, "and thank God they are."

The 12-year coach of the Giants and current executive vice president of football operations of a serious Super Bowl contender paused for a second, turned his head and said, "I was a part of it anyway."

"You were much more than that," Coughlin was told.

On his way to the bus, his step bouncy and his face aglow, Coughlin looked like a guy who had just beaten a franchise that had effectively fired him after the 2015 season in favor over the overmatched Ben McAdoo. He sat in a suite Sunday during Jacksonville's 20-15 season-opening victory over the Giants in coach Pat Shurmur's debut, and watched as his defense survived Saquon Barkley's 68-yard touchdown run in his own debut. Coughlin watched as his defense kept Odell Beckham Jr. out of the end zone and held his former two-time Super Bowl MVP, Eli Manning, to 224 passing yards on 37 attempts.

Tom Coughlin, now the executive VP of football operations for the Jaguars, hopes to build a sustainable winning franchise. Logan Bowles/Getty Images

Coughlin wasn't sitting in the middle of the press box like he did at Gillette Stadium in January, when he muttered and shook his head and banged his fist on a table as the Patriots came from behind to beat Jacksonville in the AFC Championship Game. He did his reacting to this emotional game in relative solitude, after Giants co-owner John Mara visited his suite before kickoff.

In the lead-up to this opener, Coughlin had declined interview requests for a reason. Actually, for two reasons:

He really means it when he says he wants Doug Marrone to be the voice of the franchise. He will always feel the sting of losing a job he desperately wanted to retire from.

"I put all that aside," Coughlin told ESPN.com as he left the Jacksonville locker room and made the long, victorious walk to the bus. "It's just a game. Trying to win a game."

But then Coughlin opened a small window on his competitive soul by bringing up the placement of his Giants homecoming in Week 1. According to NFL operations, "It takes hundreds of computers in a secure room to produce thousands of possible schedules -- a process that sets the stage for the schedule-makers to begin the arduous task of picking the best possible one."