ARTHUR ON VICTOR CRUZ
UNDRAFTED RECEIVER, PASSED OVER BY NFL AND CFL TEAMS, GETS A SHOT TO WIN THE SUPER BOWL AND MAKE FAMILY, AND THE TEAM THAT FINALLY GAVE HIM HIS CHANCE, PROUD
“As coaches, we believed that he could do it. Let me rephrase that. We thought that there was a hope that he could do it. I don’t think any of us knew that he could do it.” — New York Giants offensive co-ordinator Kevin Gilbride, on Victor Cruz.
It wasn’t that Victor Cruz was dumb, even if he felt stupid. He had bounced between a couple high schools, then been shipped up to an academics-polishing prep school up in Maine — “there really wasn’t much up there but snow,” as he puts it now, which for a kid from a bad patch of Paterson, New Jersey was disconcerting — before going to the University of Massachusetts to play football. People in his neighbourhood were proud. He was, too.
Except soon, Cruz was sent home for academic reasons. He got his grades back up at a community college, returned to Umass, and flunked out again.
“Yeah, it was tough,” Cruz says, with the Super Bowl looming. “It was tough, man. I was home all day; I didn’t want to go anywhere, I didn’t want anybody to see me, because it was embarrassing to be home when you’re supposed to be in college and guys think you’re doing all these good things, and they find out you’re home taking online courses and stuff like that, and it was a tough time.
“It was just a multitude of things that were happening. My father passed, and me being home, and not wanting to become another statistic in my town . . . and that was a part of it, just a part of the transformation of a guy that took a lot of things for granted, thought a lot of things were just going to be given to him. It was just all those things happening at one time that really pushed me to to be the great person or the great man that my dad wanted me to be.”
His father Mike Walker, a firefighter, died in 2007, six months before Cruz’s grandfather passed away, too. Asked about his father, Cruz’s eyes light up. “My dad was awesome, man,” he says.
So Cruz got back to school, driven by the desire to be the first person on his mother’s side of the family to get a degree. He played again, and caught 130 passes for 1,932 yards and 11 touchdowns in 23 games over two seasons.
And nobody — not the NFL scouting combine, not the CFL, not NFL teams — cared enough to invite him, sign him, or draft him, respectively. As Giants general manager Jerry Reese puts it, “We had Victor Cruz ranked just like everyone else. We had him ranked as a free agent, and he was a free agent.”
They got him into camp, and would have waived him at the end of the 2010 preseason had he not scored three touchdowns in a preseason game against the New York Jets, after which Jets coach Rex Ryan openly coveted him.
So Cruz stuck around. Physically, at 6-0 and 204 pounds with speed, he was fine. But as a slot receiver, he couldn’t figure out the NFL game. He was placed on injured reserve, and did not play in 2010.
“Last year when Steve Smith got hurt for a while, we tried to move some other guys around, Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham. I think they realized how tough it is in there,” says Giants quarterback Eli Manning. “Inside, it’s not as specific exactly what your route is. It’s more of a ‘Have a great feel, get open, find a zone, find a lane.’ You have to be very clear with your body language to tell me what you’re doing.”
Like school at first, Cruz wasn’t figuring it out. He dropped passes in Week 1 against Washington, and caught a couple against St. Louis in Week 2 — “It was nirvana, we were ecstatic, he caught a pass. It was wide-open, but he caught a pass,” says Gilbride — but the team signed veteran Brandon Stokely to try to fill the slot position.
The next week, Cruz caught two touchdowns against Philadelphia. The evolution of Victor Cruz had begun.
“But even then it was a good play, and a bad play . . . and he was killing us,” says Gilbride. “I think physically we thought he had a chance. But would he be intellectual enough to pick those things up fast enough?”
And week by week, Cruz unlocked the NFL puzzle. The bad plays vanished, and he would finish with 82 catches for 1,536 yards — third in the league — and nine touchdowns, with nine ensuing salsa dances in the end zone as a tribute to his Puerto Rican heritage through his mother, Bianca. Dance instructors were enlisted to evaluate the salsa, and said it was not technically correct; this week Cruz cheerfully said, “When those dance instructors get into the end zone, they can do it whatever way they want to.” In her Super Bowl news conference, Madonna — Madonna! — concluded with a salsa in Cruz’s honour.
He charmed audiences all year, with a wide smile and an easy honesty; he went from nobody to a star. Gilbride, who has been in this game a long time, was asked if he had ever seen anything like it.
“No, I haven’t,” Gilbride said. “I think it’s very unusual. And I think it’s a great tribute to the kid. It’s very hard to make that progress (as a slot receiver, inside). There are so many variations there, so many variables. Outside you’ve got a corner that rolls up or a corner that goes deep. Inside you’ve got a nickel, you’ve got a linebacker, you’ve got a safety, all those different things that happen. So I’m proud of him.”
More, he is now proud of himself. Cruz earned his degree in African-american studies, and gave it to his mother to hang on the wall.
“As many times as she could have, as many times as she could’ve just dropped the ball and said, ‘forget it. You’re just screwing up and you’re just not going to be anything.’ She never did that,” says Cruz. “She never gave up on her son. I thank her for it every day.”
He had his own child, a girl named Kennedy, last month.
Smart son, good son, proud father. Super Bowl, ma. Top of the world.
I THINK PHYSICALLY WE THOUGHT HE HAD A CHANCE
KEVIN GILBRIDE ON VICTOR CRUZ