Jets legend Joe Klecko has encouraging news for Victor Cruz:
You’ll be back as good as new.
Klecko, who overcame a patella tendon tear in 1982, was asked what he would tell Cruz, if the fallen Giant called him today for advice after suffering the same injury.
“Listen to your doctors, that’s all, they’re gonna know more than me,” Klecko told The Post. “But the thing about it is: You got no worries. No worries whatsoever.”
Klecko watched it all unfold on television.
“It kinda looked like it twisted when he turned around for the ball,” Klecko said. “I felt horrible for him. It’s not too often that those things happen where there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your knee. I’m betting he was playing through some pain there. It’s rare that there’s no inflammation in there at all and that happens. The patella tendon is the largest tendon in your body, you know? It goes to show you what kind of torque that kid puts on his legs. You see how he stops and moves. When he stops and changes direction, the torque on his legs is phenomenal, because he’s so quick.
“It was a devastating thing to hear, but the one thing about it is, in a knee, there’s no better injury, ’cause a tendon heals just like the bone. A bone heals the fastest because of blood flow. The tendon is the next to that to heal.
“So as far as his career and everything, he’s just gotta put the time in to get it better.
“He’s gonna be fine.”
Klecko tore his patella tendon in September 1982 in Foxborough and played in the playoffs after that season.
He was nowhere close to 100 percent, but he was Joe Klecko, one of the toughest players ever to wear an NFL uniform, and you never know when you will get to chase a Super Bowl.
“There were people out there whispering in my ear going, ‘Guys don’t come back from that injury,’ ” Klecko said. “I said, ‘What?’ You know me, remember, I would never take that for an answer.”
Klecko was 100 percent by the 1983 training camp and made the Pro Bowl the next three seasons.
“That was back in 1982. Today, with the personal trainers, and all the attention they pay to rehab — I’d bet he’s at full strength at everything he wants in January or February,” Klecko said.
“As long as there’s no other damage to his knee — just his patella tendon? — as odd as this may sound when I say this — it’s actually a good knee injury.”
Klecko flew home from Foxborough and was operated on that night at Lenox Hill Hospital.
“And actually, my right knee that I broke that patella tendon in, that’s the only operation I’ve ever had on that knee and I’m 60 years old now — that knee is absolutely fine, 100 percent, no problem,” Klecko said.