One of my favorite things to watch this season has been the route running skills of Victor Cruz. Most wide receivers make the majority of their yards from their athleticism and natural physical ability (think Calvin Johnson here), but Cruz has bucked that trend, especially for such an inexperienced player, by taking defensive backs to task with his routes and fakes.
That’s not to say Cruz is without athletic talents himself–some of his best plays on the season have come from combining both those talents with the route running–but it's such a rare thing to see a player with such precise, slick, and disguised routes, it needs to be highlighted.
Cruz has been tearing teams to pieces from the slot all season long, and a large part of that is because corners, whether they be inexperienced or savvy veterans, simply can’t live with his sharp cuts and expert fakes. We’re going to look at three such plays from the season, including one that came in the first matchup between the Giants and Patriots.
Week 9 @ New England | 2ndQ, 10:19 | 2nd-and-5
Outcome:
Working against Kyle Arrington, Cruz picks up 13 yards on a square-in route.
Why it worked:
This was one of the slickest routes I've seen this season. Cruz is lined up at LWR (unusual for him, in that he's not in the slot), and that pits him against Kyle Arrington, easily the Patriots' best cover corner this season. Arrington is lined up 7 yards off the line in a typical off-man coverage alignment, meaning he has one-on-one coverage with Cruz on the pattern.
Cruz attacks Arrington’s base, running right at the Patriots' corner (something you will see as a trend if you watch him enough), and then slows when he approaches the first down marker, having closed the cushion and gotten on top of the defensive back.
At this point, Arrington is put in a tough spot because he has to respect the potential of Cruz to run by him down the sideline and he begins to open his hips in that direction. Cruz combines his acceleration from the hesitation on the route with an outside step to get Arrington to turn completely to the sideline, but the outside step was only the base for his cut back inside across the field.
Cruz breaks towards the center of the field at the first down marker and is running toward the pass with Arrington facing completely the wrong way downfield and spinning around just to give chase. To the Patriot corner's credit, he recovers quickly and gets in position to make the tackle after only another 5 yards, but the move to gain such huge separation was devastating.
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Week 10 @ San Francisco | 2ndQ, 15:00 | 2nd-and-3
Outcome:
Cruz picks up 18 yards on a slant working against Carlos Rogers from the slot.
Why it worked:
Rogers had a great season for the 49ers–and really was one of the league’s better corners this year–but in two games against the Giants, he could not cover Victor Cruz. This play is perhaps as badly as he got beaten, and it was on one of the simplest routes in football, the quick slant.
Facing 2nd-and-3, the Giants get Cruz and Rogers matched-up one-on-one in the slot to the left of the formation. Cruz is off the line so Rogers can’t get any kind of a jam on him and has to try and mirror his route with his backpedal. Cruz runs right toward Rogers from the outset and then takes a hard jab-step to the outside, dipping his shoulder and head at the same time, forcing Rogers to move in that direction to counter.
Cruz uses that step to cut off and break back across the formation on his slant/crossing route. Rogers is so unbalanced by the speed and precision of the move that Cruz has gained more than 2 yards of separation by the time Rogers has turned back in the right direction. From this point, Cruz is wide open and has only open field in front of him while Rogers, recognizing just how badly he has been beaten, can only take off into the secondary in the hope of chasing Cruz down eventually.
He never gets anywhere near him and the Giants' receiver picks up 18 before being forced out of bounds on the far side of the field by the deep safety, Dashon Goldson.
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Week 13 vs. Green Bay | 3rdQ, 1:39 | 3rd-and-6
Outcome:
Eli Manning hits Cruz for a 12-yard gain against Charles Woodson to move the chains.
Why it worked:
This was a huge play for the Giants in a close game that they ultimately went on to lose at the death. Trailing by four, New York faced a 3rd-and-6 from their own 4-yard-line. If they failed to convert, they were going to hand excellent field position to one of the league’s most potent offenses and possibly see the game slip out of their reach.
Cruz lined up in the slot to the left of the formation with Green Bay’s Charles Woodson in coverage. Taking a slow and wide release, Cruz winds up his speed and bends his route across the field, as if to try and accelerate by Woodson on a shallow crossing pattern before Woodson has recognized the route.
Woodson sees it and makes his move to jump in front of that route, but that isn’t what Cruz is running. Everything so far has been an elaborate fake to make Woodson jump in the opposite direction of where Cruz wants to go, and at this point he plants his feet and spins back around on his whip route to the outside.
Woodson has been so thoroughly beaten by the fake that he is out of the play, and it takes Sam Shields coming up from the outside to stop Cruz from making significant yards after the catch on top of picking up the first down.
Charles Woodson is a savvy veteran who has seen it all before, and Cruz has the understanding in his route running to be able to set up a player of that intelligence by showing him exactly what he expects to see only to do something else entirely.
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