Victor Cruz (
)
Young man is snubbed by the NFL. Young man opens eyes by catching three touchdown passes in a preseason game against the Jets. Young man makes the team. Not just any team, the New York Football Giants, just an Eli Manning Hail Mary from his home in Paterson, N.J. Young man becomes father to baby girl. Young man catches touchdown pass in Super Bowl. Young man wins Super Bowl.
Young man walks into the Timex Performance Center on a hot, sunny July afternoon, walks out a millionaire, a Giant for Life.
To Victor Cruz belongs the spoils, and to the Giants belong Victor Cruz. And everyone can now sing “Hallebluejah,” and salsa to the bank with him.
This was the kind of dream day Aaron Hernandez was supposed to have enjoyed last August, when the Patriots locked him up through 2018 with a five-year, $40 million extension and $16 million guaranteed. Now Hernandez is just plain locked up for the alleged murder of Odin Lloyd.
It wasn’t the money that changed Hernandez, the proverbial leopard who couldn’t change his spots or his thug associations. The challenge for Cruz will be to make sure the money doesn’t change him as a person or as a football player. He should look to the stars in this town who have remained humble and hungry — Manning and Derek Jeter and David Wright and Henrik Lundqvist and Carmelo Anthony — as models.
In the meantime, it is safe to reach the conclusion the Giants won’t for any conceivable reason have to one day offer their fans to line up to return Cruz No. 80 jerseys. The Giants have seen enough from him, inside their locker room and in the community, where he strives to be a role model, to judge him as the anti-Hernandez.
His Twitter bio: Scholar, Athlete, Human Wide Receiver New York Giants Official Spokesperson for Campbell’s Chunky Soup.
Cruz is already a darling of Madison Avenue, thanks to that big, million-dollar smile, even before he put pen to paper on this real-life rags-to-riches fairy tale.
Cruz gets more starting in 2014 than Wes Welker gets, paid handsomely by an organization that doesn’t need him to fill PSLs, that only asks him to catch touchdown passes from Manning and get it back to another Super Bowl — especially Super Bowl XVLIII at MetLife Stadium in February.
Cruz and the Giants are a catch made in heaven, and once the market for slot receivers was set by the modest, two-year, $12 million guaranteed contract Welker signed with the Broncos, it was only a matter of time before a deal was struck.
Cruz gets to catch more touchdown passes from Manning and more endorsements from Madison Avenue and realizes his improbable dream of long-term security for himself and his family. The Giants catch a rising star in the prime of his career.
“Now I can focus on my craft and getting on the same page as Eli,” Cruz said.
Cruz plays for the $2.879 million tender in 2013, but gets $15.6 million of his five-year, $43 million extension guaranteed, less than his negotiation moonshot but more than Welker’s guaranteed money, more than Danny Amendola’s $10 million guaranteed from the Patriots.
Cruz came out of Paterson, N.J., and UMass, came out of nowhere, really, to dance his way into Big Blue hearts. He sparked the Super Bowl XVLI run with that 99-yard catch and run against the Jets on Christmas Eve 2011. Cruz dramatically outplayed his $540,000 2012 contract, even as he became a marked man with Hakeem Nicks, Next Man Up for sticky contract talks, hobbled.
Cruz posted a photo on his Instagram account yesterday of him with arms extended, squinting into a world now his oyster, standing under the big NY on the wall of Giants headquarters.
“I’ve come a long way,” he said.
Good for him, his girlfriend, Elaina Watley, and their year-and-a-half-old daughter, Kennedy, and good for his mother, Bianca.
“To come from where I’ve come from, a lot of guys don’t see Graduation Day in college, let alone this day in the National Football League,” Cruz said. “Words can’t even describe how I feel. Words can’t even describe the energy that’s flowing through my body right now.
“It’s a beautiful, great feeling.”
Now go help your quarterback win another Super Bowl.