The magnitude of the moment, a moment he has spent a year wishing and waiting for, gripped Victor Cruz on his Monday morning drive to the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, home of the New York Football Giants.
“I’m actually going to be putting the helmet on,” Cruz told himself.
What began with tears of anguish last Oct. 12, when he tore his right patellar tendon and was carted off the field at the Linc, may very well culminate in tears of joy Sunday in Buffalo when, if all goes as expected the rest of this week, Cruz finally begins his comeback.
“I can’t lie, there might be some emotions spread out there on the field on Sunday as well,” said Cruz, who turns 29 in November, all of a sudden.
He hasn’t salsa-ed in the end zone since Sept. 21, 2014, after catching a 26-yard TD pass from Eli Manning. He won’t stop now.
“It’s the same. It’s the same. I’m not changing up anything,” Cruz said. “Will there be tears of some sort? Maybe. Not gonna confirm nor deny that. I’m very macho when I talk to you guys.
“But we’ll see, it’s definitely going to be an emotional game, it’s definitely going to be a fun game. I plan on just having fun and catching everything that goes my way, and hopefully come out with a win.”
Fairy tales can come true, they can happen to you, when you’re young at heart.
But let’s not expect miracles from Victor Cruz here.
The comebacks by Adrian Peterson and Peyton Manning are the exception rather than the rule.
“I just want to go in there, be myself, catch everything, run after the catch, and just play well,” Cruz said, “and this is a stepping stone for the rest of the season.”
The grueling rehab left him optimistic he would start Week 1, but then the left calf rudely interrupted last month and postponed his dream return. On-field tests remain to be passed before the medical staff gives Cruz the greenest light of his football life. He passed another Monday running routes pain-free.
“I’m convinced I’m playing Sunday,” Cruz said.
It is one thing to be with your teammates in the meeting rooms and in the cafeteria, so much better wearing No. 80 catching passes from your franchise quarterback alongside fast friend Odell Beckham Jr.
“You want to be out there on that field going through the trenches with them,” Cruz said.
Game day was the worst for him.
“Brutal,” Cruz said. “A) Because I’m not playing, the first two weeks weren’t fun because of how we lost … and last week because I knew that there was potential for me to come back in Week 4, the anxiety was building up.”
He promises he is over the psychological hurdles that accompany athletes forced to confront their field-of-dreams mortality when they return from a debilitating injury. He wants his team to send a 100-percent Victor Cruz into battle.
“I don’t want to go out there and be 60 percent,” Cruz said.
The irony that Rex Ryan is coaching the Bills is not lost on Cruz. Ryan was coaching the Jets in 2010 when Cruz, a nobody undrafted free agent from UMass, announced himself to the football world with a three-touchdown preseason performance.
“It’s interesting. I know Rex is like, ‘Man, I can’t get away from this guy,'” Cruz said, and smiled that million-dollar smile. “The preseason game was special for me because I wanted to prove to the world and to this team that I can play at this level.”
Then there was the 99-yard 2011 Christmas Eve catch-and-run touchdown that sparked the Giants’ Super Bowl run and KO’d Ryan’s Jets.
“I still remember it like it was yesterday,” Cruz said. “It was a moment that can’t be relived, and a moment that propelled us to bigger and greater things. That 99-yarder will always be in my mind for sure.”
He’s been out of sight for too long. But for Giants fans, never out of mind.