Victor Cruz flew to Cincinnati with the Giants this week for two practices and a preseason game against the Bengals, but he wasn’t planning on spending much time with the Bengals.
Cruz said before the trip that he knew he wasn’t going to do anything during the portions of practice involving the Bengals or play in Friday night’s game because the Giants didn’t want him to “do anything crazy.” Cruz must have convinced the Giants of his sanity at some point in the interim because Cruz took part in both 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 work with Bengals defenders on Wednesday.
“I wanted to get a little bit of a challenge, a little bit against them,” Cruz said, via NJ.com. “It felt good. I was out there running around a little bit. Everything felt kind of similar to what I had hoped. I felt good in and out of breaks and getting open, things like that. There’s no pain, nothing hurts. It’s just a matter of continuing to run routes and getting the familiarity back.”
Cruz is still out for Friday night, but the decision to let him go in team drills is a positive sign for the team’s confidence in Cruz’s recovery from last year’s torn patellar tendon. The team hasn’t made any plans for the remainder of the schedule, but Cruz said he’d like to play in at least one game and clear another hurdle on his way to the regular season.