New York Giants: Why Victor Cruz Should Wait to Return
New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz hopes to get some snaps during the team’s mandatory minicamp this spring. However he might be better off waiting until training camp to make his return.
From a distance, New York Giants receiver Victor Cruz, bright orange cleats and all, looks like a lonely man as he goes through a series of sprints under the watchful eye of a team trainer.
In this case, looks are certainly not deceiving. The 29-year-old Cruz, who has not played a regular season NFL game since October 12, 2014, is itching so badly to get back to practicing with his teammates that he is hoping he’ll be allowed on the field during the team’s mandatory minicamp this week.
“I’m feeling good. I ran some routes this past Friday, some full speed routes and everything went well,” Cruz recently said according to Jordan Raanan of NJ Advance Media.
“We’ll see what happens next week. They might throw me out there with the wolves a little bit, so we’ll see how it goes.”
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While it’s understandable to hear how badly Cruz, a strong-willed competitor, wants to get back on the field to end an odyssey that has included a torn patellar tendon in his right knee and a torn fascia in his left calf (via Curtis Crabtree of Pro Football Talk), he might be better off to “plead the fifth” when it comes to questions about his return to the field.
Last summer, Cruz surprised a lot of people when he took and passed the team’s conditioning drill at the start of camp.
This, of course, happened a little more than nine months after first suffering the knee injury that, per Ebenezer Samuel of the New York Daily News, came with more questions than answers about his rehab and whether the knee would actually ever be the same again.
After that hurdle, Cruz never got the chance to answer the question about whether he would ever be the same receiver again. Just days into the team’s 2015 training camp, he developed the calf problem which was initially thought by the team to be a minor issue.
Suddenly days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months.
Cruz, who believed that he would be back sooner than later, tried one more time to get on the field, this in early October.
Once again, his hopes were crushed, this latest injury too much to overcome. He was placed on injured reserve on November 17 and had surgery not long after.
The issue with Cruz’s current itch to return to the field before he might actually be ready is a matter of him balancing being optimistic with being realistic.
It’s never a bad thing for an athlete to be positive regarding the recovery process. However, believing that one is actually further ahead in rehab than might actually be the case can have a negative affect if the comeback falls short.
While Cruz himself might feel 100 percent—he said as much back in mid-April according to James Kratch of NJ Advance Media—that raises a legitimate question.
If Cruz really were really 100 percent, then why hasn’t he been given the green light to practice with his teammates?
Instead he continues to work on the side under the watchful eye of a trainer doing work that includes sprints, at times using resistance bands.
This work, based on what the media has been able to see, is done sans a full set of football pads and against “air” rather than live competition.
He has looked good to the casual, untrained eye; yet he continues to wait for the green light from the medical staff, whose eyes are better qualified to gauge if there is something still off on a player’s gait and movement that could lead to other issues.
This is why according to head coach Ben McAdoo, the Giants’ medical team has set a return date of training camp for Cruz—July 28, the day the team reports to be exact—would be the first potential date that Cruz might have the green light to continue his comeback.
“He’s progressing, but he’s still in a holding pattern,” McAdoo said after the team’s fourth OTA on June 1. “We’re looking forward to getting him back to training camp.”
McAdoo was then asked if Cruz was going to stay where he was—working on the side with a trainer—until training camp.
“Yeah. He’s working to progress. He’s going to be out of the team periods until training camp,” he said.
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Cruz’s desire to get back on the field yesterday is admirable and is what makes him the competitor and leader that he is.
However, he also needs to remember that his team will need him the most in September and not for some non-contact, pad-free minicamp practices that will be long forgotten by then.