Undrafted wide receiver Victor Cruz had already done enough to warrant a spot on the Giants roster, and his goal for the final preseason game was this: Don’t screw it up.
“You kind of start thinking maybe I have a shot here,” said Cruz, out of UMass and Paterson, N.J. “But it was definitely a long shot. You still want to keep pushing, keep striving.”
And if he finishes what he started?
“It’d be surreal,” Cruz said. “Honestly I’d probably cry if I find out I made the team. It’s just a crazy feeling to come up the way I came up and the struggles that I’ve been through. To make any team, not only this team, would be fantastic.”
Cruz headed into the final preseason game leading all NFL receivers with 241 yards and four touchdown catches in the first three. His 12 receptions put him second, one behind Bengals rookie Jordan Shipley.
The next trick for Cruz is to show the coaching staff that he deserves to get a uniform on game day. That is why his work on special teams is vital. There’s a need for return men on both kickoffs and punts and thus far Cruz has been given a look on punt returns. He flubbed his second attempt in a game, fumbling it out of bounds.
If Cruz can make enough of an impression to be used in that role, it will make him that much more valuable to be considered the 45 active players on Sundays.
“The thing that all those young guys — you preach, but sometimes they don’t listen — that it’s going to be special teams,” Tom Coughlin said. “If he can help us on special teams, it’s going to be a tremendous asset for him and much more for us to evaluate.”
Coughlin usually keeps six receivers on the roster and another on the practice squad. At the start of the summer it figured the best Cruz could do was stick on the practice squad, unless the Giants were finally ready to pull the plug and let go of Sinorice Moss – a former second-round pick with little to show for his first four years.
Moss, though, was having his typically solid training camp and there didn’t seem to be any place to put Cruz. Moss couldn’t endure. He was sidelined with a groin injury that eventually was diagnosed as a sports hernia. He underwent surgery this past week and was placed on season-ending injured reserve.
