PHOENIX — Tom Coughlin is cautiously optimistic about Victor Cruz’s comeback from his gruesome patellar tendon injury.
The Giants coach said Wednesday that Cruz “looks really good and light” and started running last week at the team’s indoor practice facility six months after tearing the tendon in a Week 6 loss at Philadelphia.
Coughlin also projected the former Pro Bowl wide receiver will be available for the start of training camp in July but wouldn’t be any more specific, especially when it comes to whether Cruz could return in time for the regular-season opener.
“I think he’ll be the player that he was, and hopefully better,” Coughlin said during the NFC coaches’ breakfast at the Arizona Biltmore. “But as far as when, I would be careful. Hopefully, it’s the first [regular-season] game. But if it isn’t, we’ve done that before. We just went through it.”
That was Coughlin’s reference to Odell Beckham Jr., who missed the first four games of the regular season last year because of a nagging hamstring issue before emerging as the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Coughlin liked enough of what he saw in Cruz’s workout last week to say target the start of training camp to have Cruz on the field. The team will be extremely cautious with him, though.
“You’re not just going to throw him to the wind,” Coughlin said. “He’ll work his way through.”
Coughlin tried to douse any alarm about Eli Manning’s current lame-duck contract status, predicting the quarterback eventually will get an extension and finish his career as a Giant.
“I don’t see that as being an issue,” Coughlin said when asked if the absence of an extension would become a distraction for Manning. “Eli knows he’s our guy.”
Despite Coughlin’s confidence, Giants management, after three consecutive non-playoff seasons, appears willing to let Manning play out the final year of the deal he signed in 2009.
According to Coughlin, the lack of progress on an extension is just how the Giants tend to do business.
“Sometimes the way in which this works, particularly when you’re talking about our franchise, the process is slower,” Coughlin said on the final day of the NFL owners meetings here. “It’ll get done, and I’m fully confident of that. And I think so is Eli. Why would he have any concern about that? I don’t see that as anything in terms of him getting ready to go and playing.”
Coughlin said he was sorry to see the Jets fire Rex Ryan, especially with the Giants and Jets scheduled for their once-every-four-years regular-season matchup this season. But Coughlin doesn’t think Ryan’s absence will lessen the intensity of the local rivalry.
“Rex is a friend, and I wish him well,” Coughlin said. “But the rivalry between the Giants and the Jets will continue. The fan bases will take care of that.”
Thanks to Big Blue’s 2015 schedule, Coughlin is taking no immediate gratification out of the Eagles trading notorious Giants-killer LeSean McCoy out of the division to the Bills.
“We’ve still got to play him,” Coughlin said, referring to the Giants’ upcoming interconference matchup with Buffalo, where the Pro Bowl running back was traded.