Just How Good Is Victor Cruz?

then that’s on them. I think he’s a fine receiver, I’m just not afraid of him beating us.

LOUD NOISES!!!!!,

Lol, j/k. You make a lot of fair points on Cruz. He’s having a great year but the number 1 threat from the Giants is and will always be Nicks. But just watch out for Cruz, he turns a number of 10 yard passes into huge gains and TDs

about Cruz not being big, and Grimes covering him “sometimes,” coupled with (lol) STATS as a reason not to fear Cruz.

Watch him play. Feel the fear.

That is all.

however, his DYAR is higher than Fitz’s, and I’m saying “Don’t put him on that level in spite of his great season.”

Great season? Yes, but if he’s going to be a great WR he’s gotta do it for multiple seasons.

if we don’t take him seriously, he will beat us, but I expect us to take him seriously and, as such, should be able to limit him.

Given his physicality. That said, Dunta’s been a nice matchup on paper against a lot of receivers, with mixed results.

Nicks has been playing on 1 leg (n teams know it) the past 2 weeks and Cruz has handled the double team with flying colors . If u recall Harper could never do that.

Nicks is the our No. 1, Victor has had a great season, but part of the reason he has not had a lot of double coverage to deal with in the first place is becasue Nicks absolutly kills teams one on one, so sooner or later your going to have to double Nicks and that’s when Victor starts doing damage.

Not even close in ability. Nor was Az Akeem to Holt/Bruce. No one else I could compare him to comes to mind….

Cruz is just damn good at running sneaky routes and is a jacked up dude who can position himself real well to jump and fight for the ball when it is in the air. And then once he gets it, he is quick, agile, and makes people miss.

Plus he has a QB with a history of making WR’s great. :-)

This was supposed to be a reply to Larry Soprano.

But as you said, I think they’ll push Grimey toward Cruz when they can. They just match up well.

and assign Grimey to Cruz exclusively. Now, seeing as that has never happened, I’m not counting on it.

Steve Smith, to my knowledge, didn’t do diddly for the Eagles this year. Kevin Boss had Carson “Intercepticon” (Yes, Intercepticon) Palmer.

I feel like Eli and Matt Ryan are very similar in nature. Neither are mobile, though Eli has several years more of experience. I think, due to the way Matt runs our offense, we would be totally lost without him. Whether he makes his receivers better or not (Brady is the master of this), I can’t say for sure. We haven’t had any really good offensive talent leave here since he started playing with us.

Actually, I take that back. Michael Jenkins (WR for the Vikings now) played with us for several years. He was #22 in DYAR in 2008, his best statistical season, but was around #50 this year. He was never really that good for us, though, so I can’t really say he could be used for the sake of Matt Ryan achieving “point guard” status.

look at what Santonio holmes has become w/o him. a 600 yard cancer, instead of a 1200 yard cancer.

I get a chuckle out of it every time I see it, not because I think it’s dumb, I think it’s very unique.

And yes, he does look the part of a good dancer. Maybe he should do Dancing with the Stars

Cruz isn’t a burner. he’s speedy, but he can’t run away from most DBs. he’s not big, length or muscle. but he has it.

his best assets to me are his route running abilities and his concentration on the ball once it’s in the air. the play on Sunday where he caught it in double coverage is one instance. Also that jump ball he caught over a 6’2" Nnamdi is another.

the funny thing is, they can also not be assets at all. how many times have we(Giant’s fans) seen Cruz run a short out when Eli threw a go route? also, how many drops have we seen Cruz have, where he didn’t concentrate on the ball all the way into his hands?

so in essence, what kills him at times, is what also makes him great.

He’ll never get the recognition of a Revis Island, but if you play with the Grimes fire too many times, you will get burned.

I expect it to be a good matchup whenever they’re up against each other. Cruz is good, no doubt, but we feel similarly about Grimes here. He’s our superstar on defense and doesn’t get near the hype he probably deserves.

I saw Nicks in college. He makes some ridiculous catches, but it’s not something we haven’t seen before. We get Breesus and company twice a year, every year.

The stats kinda speak for themselves.

I can assure you that in this long, rollercoaster season, Cruz isn’t anything we haven’t already seen. And it would be highly unlikely that he would not be accounted for, considering he was your leading receiver.

We also have one of those. Julio Jones is the same way. He gets better every single week, except he’s considered an actual starter in nfl.com’s metrics.

I would think you guys should be concerned with making sure to cover Julio more than we should be concerned with making sure to cover Cruz. Cruz has the stats (and some recognition), whereas Julio has been injured and does not have the stats. He has received some recognition in the past month or so (4 TDs in the past 3 games), but when you think of Falcons football this year, he’s not the first one that comes to mind, unless you tie the draft day mortgage to him.

Makes the WTF?!? factor that much bigger when he climbs the ladder for a pick.

Because if that is your best cover guy, sooner or later your going to have to start doubling Nicks, Although Victor has the numbers our No. 1 is Nicks and he is the reason Victor get’s mostly one on one coverage.

I understand that Giants fans think of Nicks as the “#1 receiver”, but labels don’t really mean anything.

Whoever Grimes is covering, that guy will have a very hard time getting open. Sometimes it will be Cruz, sometimes it won’t. The Falcons don’t assign him to one receiver for the entire game. The closest they’ve come to doing that was against the Lions, and he covered Calvin Johnson as well as or better than anyone else this season.

The point is not that Grimes will stick to Cruz the entire game and shut him down. The point is that part of what makes Cruz’ traditional stats so impressive is the team he’s on. Again, to reiterate, nobody is saying that he’s not very good, or that he’s simply a product of his team/system, but you can’t deny that he’s in a great position up there in New York. He’s just not a guy that can go out there and, no matter what, “get his”. With a guy like Brent Grimes in the secondary, who is one of the best corners in the game despite the fact that Giants fans seem to have never heard of him before, most Falcons fans are going into this game with the expectation that Cruz will not be racking up 178 yards like he did against Dallas.

it will be mano a mano. He will likely receive no help, as (in my and my Falcons’ fans opinions) he will not need any.

Dunta will likely receive help over the top if this happens. I’m one of the few who believes Dunta usually receives no help over the top, which is why he plays so far off his man. If Nicks gets a double, and Grimes can handle Cruz, I like our chances because our two 3 down LBs are good, good, good.

and he played in all 16 games.

and it wasn’t on Grimes, it was because our free safety blew coverage.

Also, didn’t Asomugha have zero INTs last year?

vastly overrated and not a great indicator of how good the player is. Like Caleb said, Asomugha had zero picks his last year with the Raiders and was the best corner in the league. Grimes has the ability to make guys he is on almost non-factors in a game, thus meaning the QB doesn’t throw his way and that leads to low INT numbers. INT’s are very largely a benefit of overall defensive effort, not just the player that makes the pick

Top 5 in yards per pass (at the receiver he was covering) and YAC allowed last year in spite of 111 targets. Only one person on the list came remotely close to him as far as targets went and that was Brandon Flowers, who had 97 targets. Most of the DBs on those lists had somewhere in the neighborhood of

If anything, that should suggest to you that even if you throw at him all day and night, you won’t be getting very far.

Because people tried. And a whole lot of them didn’t get very far.

Also, watch the video I posted in the post above. There’s probably not another DB in the league who can do that. Now imagine that he runs as fast as Cruz (don’t worry, he does).

That’s Grimes. And if he’s 100% on Sunday, I hope Eli knows not to throw at him because if he does one too many times, it won’t end well for your Giants.

They’re just being very cautious with it. He could have played last week, but we didn’t need him and the coaching staff took the opportunity to give him extra rest. He should be as close to being healthy as any other football player in week 18.