For an electrifying while there, the play would begin with Eli Manning dropping back to pass, and it would end with Victor Cruz doing a salsa in the end zone that made Big Blue hearts dance.
There was that season-changing, 99-yard catch-and-run on Christmas Eve 2011 that buried the Jets and ignited the Giants’ second Super Bowl championship run, and the 2-yard TD catch in the first quarter of Super Bowl XLVI, and 23 other touchdowns during a career sabotaged on that cruel October night in 2014 when the torn patellar tendon in his right knee left him sobbing on a cart on the very field where Manning will return Monday night against the Eagles for his unexpected farewell.
They were something together. Manning-to-Cruz was a thing before Odell Beckham Jr. blazed across the New York skyline in his meteoric rise to stardom.
Manning getting this last chance in the only job and only organization and only town he has known and loved, was cheered by teammates and fans and even opponents old and young, because of the way he has represented himself and his family and his team and the NFL shield every step of the way for 16 years.
No one ever had to remind Eli Manning that playing in the NFL was a privilege and not a right.
And to Cruz, not to mention virtually everyone else, it was a privilege to call Manning his teammate and quarterback. Cruz was an eyewitness to one of the most courageous performances in Giants history, and later to an act of empathy and compassion that stamped Manning one more time as the Pride of the Giants.
One day, when Cruz has grandchildren and reminisces about a Giants career that ended too soon, on Feb. 13, 2017, he will tell them why Manning meant what he meant to him.
“Two things — and it kinda tells both sides of the story of Eli,” Cruz told The Post.
“One is the [2011] NFC Championship game against San Francisco where he was just fighting, and you could just see him fighting. And it really made everybody else fight just right there with him.
“You see him, you know, chinstrap on his nose, dirt in his eye, like he’s just still getting up time after time making play after play after play. That’s one.
“Second one is him calling me after the Giants let me go, and him being the first one to call my phone and say, ‘Man, thank you for everything you’ve done for the organization and for me and my career, and good luck to you from whatever you do now and in the future.’
“That just showed who he is, on both ends of the spectrum.”
Less than a month from his 39th birthday, Manning is no different from the man a wide-eyed Cruz first got to know when he was a free agent out of UMass and became one of the Boys of Summer in preseason 2010.
“I knew he was about his business,” Cruz said. “I knew that he was gonna be the guy that didn’t say much, but just went out there and got it done, and got his team together, but through his play … wasn’t gonna say too much, but I knew he spoke volumes through his play and through his actions, and I think that’s always been Eli, even from the very first time I’ve seen him on TV, to getting to know him, all the way up until now, is that he’s always handled his business the right way, and went out there and been a class act and a professional from the very beginning.”
No one knows whether this will be one last glance at The Ultimate Giant, trotting back out to a huddle that had belonged to him from the November day he replaced Kurt Warner in 2004 to the September day in 2019 when he was replaced by Daniel Jones. In the meantime, it was more than enough for everyone who has appreciated a two-time champion on the 18th green to live in the moment and root for him to sink the putt.
“I’m ecstatic for him, man,” Cruz said. “I’m excited for him to kinda have control and kinda control the narrative a little bit and be under his power, right? Like go out there and just not have the pressure of failing or the pressure of succeeding, just going out there and letting his hair down and feeling like a high school kid again, playing football and throwing it around to his teammates.”
One last night to feel forever young.
“I think he’s excited for an opportunity to kinda go out with a good taste in his mouth — whether he retires or whatever he keeps playing, whatever he decides to do,” Cruz said, “I think in this moment right now, he wants to relish in this moment and really just be in the moment throughout the course of the game.”
No one deserves it more.
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Eli Manning's last stand through the eyes of Victor Cruz - New York Post
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