HOLD THE SALSA
SO THIS is how it could end for Victor Cruz, the rags to riches story of the Giants’ last Super Bowl run. It ends with the one-time salsa-ing superstar reduced to nothing more than Odell Beckham Jr.’s BFF, another spineless Giants receiver on that ill-timed trip to Miami, the trip that definitely didn’t help (and may very well have hurt) the Giants on Sunday, when they fell to the Packers in Green Bay in the NFC Wildcard Playoffs.
It ends with Cruz, once the Giants’ heart and soul, selling his soul to stay in Club Beckham, never daring to serve as the voice of reason to his teammates in Miami, just as he was never willing to call out Beckham (or anyone else) in the locker room this entire season. And it ends with Cruz, 30 years old, emulating Beckham, 24, and spending perhaps his final Monday in East Rutherford in hiding, joining Beckham as the lone two big-name Giants unavailable to the media.
If this is Victor Cruz’s final chapter as a Giant, it ends with him as a follower, not a leader, as not only a diminished player but a diminished icon. Because if there was anyone this season who had the power and presence to course-correct the insanity of that trip to Miami — and get through to Odell Beckham Jr. — it should have been Cruz, the player that the rest of the Giants receiving corps refers to as a “big brother.”
“Victor is a great leader in our room, and he’s a great guy to be around,” said backup receiver Roger Lewis. “A great teammate, a big brother.”
Except Big Brother Cruz was never willing to say the hard things, instead joining the army of Giants presences who enabled Beckham, right there with head coach Ben McAdoo, GM Jerry Reese (who finally said Beckham needs to “look at himself in the mirror and be honest with himself” on Monday), and Eli Manning.
No, Big Brother Cruz was a leader in name and rep only, the leader the young receivers and young Giants wanted but not the leader they needed. And that “leadership,” along with his inability to positively impact Beckham, are part of Cruz’s East Rutherford legacy, and part of the final image that he leaves for Giants fans.
Cruz was one of just six Giants remaining from the squad that won Super Bowl XLII, and easily the most vocal, eloquent member of that group. He’s one of the few that can (and should) remember how that team came together that year, how it was safety Antrel Rolle who, following a late-season loss to Washington, boldly and loudly called out his teammates for not practicing through injuries, a speech that helped fuel a stunning lateseason resurgence.
But Cruz never could publicly call out anyone, least of all the lone productive member of the Giants receiving corps. The best team leaders are like Rolle, willing to publicly challenge their teammates to be better. Cruz never did that. “If somebody messed up . . . he wouldn’t call us out,” said Lewis, “but he’d say, ‘Yeah, get going, get right, we’re going to bounce back.’”
And maybe this isn’t all Cruz’s fault, since Cruz was forced to lead from behind all year, his body robbed of the explosive magic it once had. He managed 586 receiving yards and one measly salsa in 2016, stats that may have made it hard for him to publicly challenge his fellow receivers.
So he didn’t challenge them at all, and on Sunday evening in Green Bay, the receivers who hung with Bieber fell flat, combining for 121 receiving yards in their first game since the trek to Miami that never needed to happen. nd it could all lead to the end of Victor Cruz’s Giants chapter that nobody ever wanted to happen, because he has a $9.5 million cap number in 2017, and his 2016 stats showed us he’s not the receiver he once was.
So this is how it likely ends for Victor Cruz, Odell Beckham’s BFF.
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