(Neil Miller/Sportsday Wire)
The Giants strength comes from their wide receivers. They came into training camp salivating with the thought of the bookends of Victor Cruz and Odell Beckham, Jr.
Now it seems Cruz won’t be ready. He hasn’t been cleared to practice.
“That’s still accurate,” Cruz said. “They haven’t cleared me just yet. I’m just listening to the training staff. The things they say to me is indicative of what will happen out here on this field.”
It has nothing to do with his knee. Cruz is nursing a “minor calf injury” which is becomeing a major pain for the Giants. The wide receiver downplayed it, but time is ticking.
“I think we’re just being careful, cautious with it,” he said. “Especially, you don’t want to come out here, and calfs are tricky. Once they feel healed and once they feel okay, you can go out here and mess it up again. So you want to make sure that it’s fully healed and fully recovered once you step back out there on the field.”
Here’s the problem. Cruz hasn’t played since the first half of last season when he injured his knee against Philadelphia, so it stands to reason there will be some rust.
Although he sounds confident, Cruz knows it’s going to take time.
“I think I’ll be ready to go,” he said. “Hopefully come Week 1, I’m able to get on the practice field and run around a little bit. I know how Coach Coughlin loves his guys to practice—if you don’t practice, you don’t play. So I want to be out here for practice come Week 1. And hopefully that’s the goal. We’ll see where it goes.”
In the meantime there’s little he can do.
“There’s things we can do in the meeting rooms—understanding where he likes to position the ball,” he said. “And coming out and getting together with him at any point in time. Trying to get some timing down with it within the practices or something we do kind of off the field. Whatever we can squeeze in timing-wise, it will be good. But it’s all pretty much cut and dry. Eli knows where I’ll be, he knows the routes, I know the routes. So hopefully we can continue to stay on the same page.”
Stay tuned.
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