He was wearing a black sweatshirt with GOTHAM CITY emblazoned in white near the top, and wearing it proudly, and on Sunday he will be defending a feverish MetLife Stadium from the man who once was in as much of a hurry to bolt from the Jets than Robert Saleh was to join them as a first-time head coach.

If there is one receipt that Robert Saleh desires to take and keep, it is the one that would read:

“I humbled the HC of the NEP.”

That would be one Bill Belichick, HC of the NYJ 22 years ago for 24 hours.

One Bill Belichick, who deployed “All gas, no brake” in the fourth quarter of last October’s 54-13 humiliation of the rookie head coach of the New York Jets.

No matter what he says or doesn’t say publicly, Saleh wants payback every bit as much as his players want it.

“He was a part of it last year, too,” Sheldon Rankins told The Post. “He takes it just as personal as the players do, as if he was out there lined up playing as well. When I say to a man, I include him, I include the rest of our coaching staff, everybody in this organization to a man.”

If you are what your record says you are, then Saleh has the better team this time.

54-13, Coach?

“That was last year, we’re a different team than last year,” Saleh said.

This was Saleh the day after the Patriots scored 20 points on him in the fourth quarter:

“It’s the NFL, it’s not like Alabama versus William & Mary. It’s the NFL. We’re all professional athletes. If you don’t want to get scored on, you gotta stop ’em.

“Is it something I would do? Probably not, but to each his own.”

The 2022 Jets have taken flight under Saleh mainly on the wings of Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner and the defense.

“He’s just a leader of men,” center Connor McGovern said. “He’s a phenomenal person, he practices what he preaches, and he preaches the right stuff. He’s really fun to play for.”

Saleh and the Jets can smell the possibilities.

“He allows the players to drive the ship, he allows the players to drive the narratives, he allows the players to take this thing where we want to go and be ourselves in the process,” Rankins said.

I asked Saleh why he loves coaching here.

“You sit back and think of all the bigwigs and media, and everyone is a Jets fan,” he said. “You go to Long Island and everyone is a Jets fan. You walk around New Jersey and New York and it seems that everyone is a Jets fan, and they’re proud no matter what. So, it makes you proud to wear these colors. It makes you proud to be a Jet. Hopefully, it stays that way for the next, hopefully we get a Bill Belichick run.”

Apparently Saleh looks at the color blue around Jersey and New York and sees green and white, and perhaps Brian Daboll looks at green and white and sees blue. But this is an opportunity for Saleh to continue fulfilling his ambition of closing the gap in the AFC East … and what better way to do that than by making Belichick see red?

When someone dredged up his receipts line, Saleh smiled and said: “I just want it go away.”

Why?

“You try your best to keep all of the distractions on me and out of the locker room,” he said.

Belichick, who will go back to Mac Jones on Sunday, still has six Super Bowl rings. Saleh didn’t come here to kiss them any more than Rex Ryan did.

“Every game is a championship game, every moment is a championship moment,” Saleh said. “I acknowledge that Bill is arguably one of the greatest coaches that have ever coached in this game. I’ll honor that forever, and he’s given to this game so much. He’s done so much for this game that we would be remiss not to acknowledge that. New England, we would be remiss to not acknowledge that they have been dominant for 20 years, but at the same time, it’s a championship moment and a championship game, no different than last week was and no different than next week will be.”

His bloodthirsty fans of the NYJ know better. So do his players. And so does he.