With the Super Bowl to be played at MetLife Stadium this season, the Giants no doubt had extra motivation to get to the playoffs and make a run at their third title in seven seasons. And Victor Cruz admitted Tuesday the Giants definitely felt the extra pressure.
“Probably subconsciously we did. It wasn’t nothing that was glaring out there like that, but subconsciously you think about it every game,” Cruz said at an event in Manhattan for Xbox One. “You wanna win, you wanna play in that Super Bowl here. You wanna be that first team to host it and things like that. It’s tough, but you kinda just gotta play every game, fight through and see what happens. We definitely felt a little bit of pressure for sure.”
The Giants started out the disastrous season 0-6 before four straight wins gave them a glimmer of hope, which was dashed in a Week 12 loss to the Cowboys. After a 37-14 loss to the Chargers in Week 14 dropped the Giants to 5-8 and officially eliminated the team from the playoffs, the clock counting down the number of days until the Super Bowl vanished from the locker room.
Cruz missed the final two regular-season games after suffering a knee injury — the first time since becoming one of the Giants’ primary receivers in 2011 that he had missed time. He recently had surgery and said he’s doing better.
“It was kind of different for me because I had never really been seriously injured before, but it was something I’d rather happen towards the end [of the season] than in the beginning so I can still be out there for my team, but it’s just something I gotta adjust to,” Cruz said. “Rehab’s going great, everything’s going in the right direction, so I’m happy about that.”
Cruz refused to blame the playoff-less season on Eli Manning, who threw a career-high (and league-high) 27 interceptions, including five games with three or more picks.
“It was certain instances that end up as a bad play or an incomplete pass or a sack, just ended up as sack-fumble or interceptions returned for touchdowns,” Cruz said. “Just little things that we caught breaks on in the past, we weren’t catching breaks, and they really hurt us as the year progressed.”