The Post was unable to confirm whether Darrelle Revis took Victor Cruz out to dinner after Monday night’s preseason game between the Jets and Giants. But this much is certain: The performance by the Giants’ rookie free-agent receiver against a porous Jets secondary was the best possible piece of leverage Revis could have slid to the middle of the table toward Jets management.
Cruz, a long shot out of UMass from Paterson, N.J., had six catches for 145 yards and three TDs on the Jets’ defense in the second half.
That prompted Rex Ryan to deliver this nervous quip at the podium after the game: “I was telling Tom [Coughlin], ‘I don’t know who this No. 3 [Cruz] is, but he’s pretty darn good.’ So I hope they cut him. I know one team that would be ready to sign him, and that’d be us.”
Linebacker Bart Scott, a few minutes later inside the Jets’ locker room, said, “We made [Cruz] look like Randy Moss.”
This, for the Jets, who say they are Super Bowl-bound, is not a good omen for things to come.
And it’s important to remember the Giants didn’t even play their best receiver, Steve Smith, and it wasn’t Eli Manning torching the secondary — it was Jim Sorgi and Rhett Bomar.
The Jets’ starting corners in the game — Antonio Cromartie and rookie top draft pick Kyle Wilson — held up well against the Giants’ first-team offense, though Wilson wasn’t tested heavily and Cromartie dropped a couple of potential interceptions.
“We did have three opportunities to get some turnovers, [and] came up with none,” Ryan said. “That’s something we would like to improve on. I was kidding with Cromartie that we’re not getting our money’s worth. He did drop the two passes, but he played great. I was really happy with the way the first defense played.”
The problem, however, is the trickle-down ramifications after Cromartie and Wilson.
With Revis, whose holdout reached 17 days yesterday, still refusing to report without a new contract, that moves everyone up one spot on the depth chart.
With Wilson forced to start, that leaves Dwight Lowery as the outside corner in the nickel and has Drew Coleman and Marquice Cole playing in dime situations.
Cruz’s 64-yard touchdown came with Lowery covering pretty closely, and Cruz made a terrific one-handed catch on the play. He also beat Coleman on a 34-yard touchdown — though Ryan said Coleman doesn’t deserve all the blame because there was another missed assignment — and Cole for a five-yard touchdown.
“I was really happy with the way the first defense played,” Ryan said. “But as happy I was with the way our [starters] played, I was totally disappointed with the way our twos [played]. These are some guys that we’re counting on to give us good depth and guys that are going to have to play, and we got whipped.
“[The Giants] did a good job playing backyard bombardier on [us], when you set up, playing the one-on-one matchups, back-shoulder fades, they put a clinic on us. We clearly have a lot of work to do with our backups in particular.”
The Jets reconvened for a team meeting last night in Cortland, where they will practice today and tomorrow before breaking camp and traveling to Charlotte on Friday for Saturday’s preseason game against the Panthers.
You can bet the backup defense got an earful from Ryan about their performance against the Giants.