Preseason phenom Cruz wants big season

Now Victor Cruz has two players he'll have to live up to.

The first is himself, or at least the out-of-nowhere preseason he had in 2010, when he burst on the scene and caught three touchdown passes in the opener against the Jets. It drew profane praise from Rex Ryan on "Hard Knocks," prompted a Twitter shout-out from LeBron James and raised expectations of Giants fans everywhere.

"I hope people don't write me off if I don't have three touchdowns in the first half or something crazy like that," Cruz said of Saturday night's preseason opener against the Panthers in North Carolina.

The second player is Steve Smith, the recently departed receiver who has left the Giants in a bit of a lurch behind their two primary pass-catchers. Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham are proven NFL players, but when the Giants go to three- or even four-receiver sets, they'll need someone else to take on the role that Smith gave them. That could be Cruz.

The 6-foot, 204-pound undrafted player who grew up in the shadows of Giants Stadium has caught some eyes in training camp. When the team had a few receivers sidelined with injuries, it was Cruz who stepped into the starting unit earlier this week. And when Domenik Hixon has rested his knee, Manningham has moved into the slot and Cruz has been on the outside in three-receiver packages.

And now comes preseason games, the time when Cruz first made a name for himself. In the four games, he caught four touchdown passes among his 15 receptions for 297 yards. It was enough to make the 53-man roster, but he appeared in only three games, did not get an offensive snap and wound up on IR with a hamstring injury.

Cruz isn't expecting such monstrous preseason numbers this year. But he is figuring that his impact will last past Labor Day.

"It was mainly instinct," Cruz said of last preseason. "A lot of those plays were conversion routes where if the defense was playing a certain coverage, I would just convert it to a go route. That's what basically all of those touchdowns were on, all those conversion go routes. But now I'm in the slot, I'm playing more, I have to read more defenses and kind of read between the linebackers and safeties. Every day I'm getting more and more comfortable with that."

Cruz isn't guaranteed a roster spot. He has flashed in practice on some deep balls that helped make him a fan favorite, but he's also dropped a number of easy ones.

But when Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin speak about the loss of Smith and needing players to step up and make plays, they're talking about Cruz. There are others in the mix -- Hixon, Devin Thomas, Darius Reynaud -- but mainly they are counting on Cruz to become a regular-season star and not just a preseason breakout.

"That first game and last preseason was amazing," Cruz said. "You always want to follow that up with a good performance."

Even if it's a year later, the Giants will take it.