National Football League

Cruz leads Giants to NFC East crown

Published Jan. 1, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

For the Cowboys, the season ended as it began: with a mistake-filled loss at what still is (and as of Sunday, quite justifiably) known as Giants Stadium.

For the Giants, however, it ended with an answer to a question that framed the 2011 campaign: Was Eli Manning really an elite quarterback?

Manning declared himself as much in August. Then again, he’s not a forceful orator, and as such, the proclamation itself was less than convincing. There was still the matter of a season to be played.

So now, here you go, the proof: 29 touchdowns, 16 interceptions, 4,933 yards, nine wins. And, oh yes, a playoff home date with Atlanta (10-6) next Sunday (1 p.m. ET, FOX). As much as anything, that was the difference between the Cowboys and the Giants. Manning is just elite enough. Tony Romo? Not so much.

That’s not to say Sunday night’s 31-14 loss was Romo’s fault. This wasn’t one of his famous fourth-quarter foul-ups. He didn’t cause his team to play uninspired football for the better part of the game, nor was it his fault that the Giants sacked him six times.

Rather, the outcome — not just of the game, but of the NFC East race — hinged on what Romo didn’t have. For all the talent that Jerry Jones supposedly has procured — Jason Witten, Dez Bryant, Miles Austin — the Cowboys don’t have a Victor Cruz.

A few months ago you didn’t know who Cruz was. Tell you the truth, Manning wasn’t too sure, either. Going into the season, he said, “We didn’t know a whole lot about him.”

Now Cruz stands as the biggest reason Manning went from having a lousy season to an elite one in the space of a year. What was wrong with Manning? According to long-held conventional wisdom, it was the absence of the formerly gun-toting Plaxico Burress. In the 2007 regular season, after which the Giants went on to win the Super Bowl, Burress made 70 catches for 1,025 yards. At 6-foot-5, he was a great target, able to out-jump, box out and post up defenders.

Cruz, on the other hand, is charitably listed at 6-1. “With my cleats on,” he said. “That’s how I like to look at it.”

He plays bigger. In fact, he plays bigger than any receiver who ever wore a Giants uniform. Cruz caught six balls for 178 yards Sunday night. He was responsible for the Giants’ first score — a 74-yard dash that saw him outrun two defensive backs up the sideline — and the last field goal, a score that stole the Cowboys’ short-lived chance in the fourth quarter.

Cruz finished the season with 82 receptions and an average of 18.7 yards — best in the NFL. That’s 1,536 yards, third in the league behind Calvin Johnson and Wes Welker, and better than any other Giants receiver, ever. And not bad for a guy who came out of UMass by way of Paterson, NJ, undrafted and largely unnoticed.

I asked Cruz if he had expected to be drafted two years ago.

“Honestly, no,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t a big guy who came from a big program. I knew I was going to have to come into a training camp and make a team.”

Cruz probably made the team by catching six balls against the Jets in a preseason game. That was August 2010, when the star receiver coming out of the draft was the Cowboys’ Bryant, who finished his rookie season with 45 catches. Cruz finished with none. A hamstring injury did him in after three games.

Going into 2011, I asked him, what was a realistic goal?

“A realistic goal was just to get a catch in a real game,” he said. “A game that mattered.”

Obviously, Cruz stands out in this age of the diva receiver. It’s not just his modesty. It’s his ability to play in a manner that can’t quite be quantified; an aptitude for the game that allows him to play bigger than 6-1 in cleats.

“He has a football sense, an understanding of when he’s open,” said Manning, who was 24 of 33 for 346 yards and three TDs. “ ... We give him a lot of leeway on getting open, and he’s earned the right ... because he senses what the coverage is, where the defenders are.”

It’s an intuitively physical sense, too. In September, he out-jumped Eagles star corner Nnamdi Asomugha for a touchdown. On Sunday, with Manning barely escaping a sack, he boxed out Cowboys defensive back Orlando Scandrick for a crucial 44-yard reception in the fourth quarter.

“Victor does a great job of going up there and being strong and making the play,” Manning said.

“Jumps over the top of the defender,” said Tom Coughlin, the still-employed coach of the playoff-bound Giants. “It was just a heck of a game, a heck of a season by the kid.”

Heck? You could call it elite.