What's Wrong with New York Giants WR Victor Cruz?

So who is this man wearing No. 80 for the New York Giants?

He stands 6’0” and weighs 204 pounds and is listed as receiver Victor Cruz in the game program.

However, his production through two games are far from being Cruz-like in that they’re a paltry seven catches (out of 16 targets) for 84 yards and no touchdowns.

The good news is that I can confirm that it is indeed Cruz, the hometown hero who made the salsa dance his signature touchdown celebration. 

The bad news is that so far, Cruz hasn't really looked like himself—it’s been almost a year in fact since he last saw the end zone and did that salsa celebration.

Through two games, Cruz is third on the Giants in both receptions and receiving yards (behind tight end Larry Donnell and running back Rashad Jennings, respectively).

Okay, so if Cruz hasn’t been involved in some sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers conspiracy, then what exactly is going on here through two games? 

Why, when working from the slot for most of the game against the Arizona Cardinals—a position where, according to the signature stats kept by Pro Football Focus (subscription required), he’s lined up 16 times this season but has only caught six passes for 79 of his yards—didn’t Cruz have a breakout performance?

Let’s pull out the magnifying glass and see what we can uncover.

Some History

In the Giants’ postgame locker room on Sunday, Cruz was asked by reporters about the dropped passes and how to fix the problem. 

“Just concentration, myself included,” he said. “I own up to all of my mistakes and all of the things that I’ve done wrong so, myself included, we’ve got to focus in on the football.”

What exactly does he mean by “concentration”?

In an article I wrote for Inside Football in 2011, I noted that Cruz had a tendency to take his eye off the ball before the catch is made. As a result, the pass usually falls incomplete or is knocked away by a defender.

Here was his response to that observation:

"

Yeah, it’s something that’s been pointed out and it’s something that goes back to my college days. I don’t know; it’s just something that I do kind of naturally.

Obviously you have to look the ball all the way in during catches, but sometimes I just feel like it’s just natural for me that when I understand and know the trajectory of the ball and how it’s coming in, I can just look away and see where the defender is coming from that split second before I catch the ball.  

"

Cruz’s inconsistency with not looking the ball all the way in when making the catch is likely a big reason why, per data pulled from PFF, he’s had 25 dropped passes since 2011, a total that saw him record double-digit drops in both 2011 and 2012, as this table shows.

Year	No. Drops	Drop Percentage (Total Targets)
2011	13	8%
2012	12	8%
2013	5	4%
2014 (through 2 games)	4	25%

"It's tough for myself individually to swallow," Cruz told Bob Papa and Amani Toomer during a SiriusXM NFL Radio interview on Tuesday morning (h/t Tom Rock of Newsday), when asked about the dropped passes.  

"I know for my teammates it's tough to swallow as well."

Part of the problem with Cruz is that, at times, he gets sloppy with his technique.

For instance, instead of extending for the ball and bringing it into his body and tucking it away (much like a running back would cradle the ball in the crook of his elbow), when Cruz takes his eye off the ball for a split second, he might not be fully aware of the position of the ball in his hands.

via NFL Game Rewind

The result is that he sometimes leaves the ball in a dangerous and exposed state, such as what we see in this frame, where the nose of the ball is nearly parallel to the ground as he starts to run with it. 

When the nose of the ball is pointing toward the ground, that’s never a good thing because it makes it easier for a defender to force a fumble.

Fortunately for Cruz and the Giants, on the play cited he didn’t lose the ball. Still, this is something that Cruz and all the Giants receivers need to remain aware of moving forward. 

The Drop on 3rd-and-6

Along that same vein of Cruz not always locking passes into his hands before taking off for yardage, let’s look at one of his biggest drops against the Cardinals—the one that came in the fourth quarter with the Giants nursing a one-point lead with 10:36 left in the game.

On the play, Cruz lined up in the slot as he had done for the majority of his snaps in the game.

Eli Manning dropped back, and in order to have a chance to hit Cruz, he had to throw it a little higher than perhaps he wanted because Jerraud Powers was right there in front of Cruz.

via NFL Game Rewind

This caused Cruz to have to extend at an awkward angle and leave his feet just a bit. Still, he did get his hands on it and should have brought it down. 

Why didn’t he reel the ball in?

“I’ve got to just follow it all the way to my hands,” he told reporters after the game when asked about that back-breaking drop. “I’ve just got to, no matter how far out of the reach it is.

“I’m able to make that catch, I’ve made that catch before. It’s just a matter of looking it all the way in, making that extra reach at the right time and bringing the ball in.”

In other words, his focus wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be in that critical spot.

Week 2 Woes

Cruz has made his NFL living working from the slot. So why didn’t he have much success last weekend against Cardinals slot cornerback Powers?

First, let’s give credit where it’s due. So far this season, Powers has been effective against slot receivers, ranking seventh on PFF’s list of slot cornerback production.

He has allowed just seven of 16 passes to be completed against him by slot receivers for 132 yards and one interception for a 46.9 NFL rating.

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

That’s very good production.

Now let’s look at the strategy against Cruz when he was in the slot. The Cardinals mostly deployed man-to-man coverage against Cruz, perhaps a result of seeing Cruz struggle to separate the week before against the Detroit Lions.

However, there were times when Cruz appeared to be operating as though he was playing against zone coverage.

What this means is that instead of running a specific pattern, it looked as though he was trying to run to an open spot between two defenders, which is what a receiver does against a zone defense in order to separate.

Let’s look at a play from the fourth quarter that illustrates this point. 

via NFL Game Rewind

As noted, the Cardinals deployed man-to-man coverage. Cruz, however, appears to be trying to get into a “soft spot” in order to make something happen.

The pass, coming on 2nd-and-long, fell incomplete because the defender stayed with Cruz all the way as opposed to passing him off to a teammate in the next zone.

Some Final Thoughts

Just as we’ve seen Manning take some time to develop a comfort level in this new offense, it’s also going to take the receivers time to become fully comfortable in the system.

Craig Warga/Associated Press

“It’s still very early in the season,” Cruz noted. "We’ve got workdays and practice to continue to work on it and be ready on Sunday.”

The good news is that Cruz said he’s ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work on making things right.

“That’s why we’re professionals. We’ve got to go in there and this is what the work week consists of—going in, watching the film, understanding the things we did wrong and continuing to learn. That’s why they put us in this position and that’s why we have to learn quickly and move on.”  

The sooner it all comes together, the better things will be for Cruz and the Giants.

Patricia Traina is the senior editor for Inside Football. All stats via Pro Football Focus (subscription required), unless otherwise noted. All quotes and information obtained firsthand, unless otherwise noted. Follow me on Twitter, @Patricia_Traina.