NFL teams
Dan Graziano, senior NFL national reporter 10y

Victor Cruz chats with Tom Coughlin

NFL, New York Giants

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Victor Cruz is excited to be a New York Giants team captain for the first time.

But the process of getting used to his new role hasn't been as smooth or as rapid as he thought it would be.

"It's something new for me, so I have to be able to understand what comes with that role and what the expectations are for me in it," the veteran wide receiver said Wednesday. "It takes a lot of resiliency, a lot of strength emotionally to kind of withhold some of the things you feel and use them with your team in private rather than say them out loud and have people making judgments about them."

Cruz was clearly stung last week when a small controversy sprung up over something he said to the media. In an answer to a question on a conference call, Cruz said he believed the offense would work better if he and Rueben Randle got more targets in the passing game than they had in the season opener.

In some places, this was presented as Cruz demanding more targets, Keyshawn Johnson-style, and he's expressed annoyance with reporters more than once in the past week when the subject has come up.

Cruz also had a rough game Sunday, dropping a couple of key passes in the Giants' Week 2 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. So with everything swirling around Cruz and the Giants off to an 0-2 start for the second year in a row, coach Tom Coughlin thought it would be a good idea to meet with his newly minted captain this week and have a chat.

"It was more or less a conversation about ... Victor's a captain now," Coughlin said. "And it's not just his group, but I believe his group can and should play better. We're not exactly scoring many points. We need people to be in that position, and he agreed with me and he's working towards doing something about that."

Cruz said he's enjoying being a captain because he believes he's able to address his team now and say things he couldn't have said in the past without teammates "looking at me like I've got six heads."

But Cruz also recognizes the challenge of trying to help the Giants avoid the same kind of spiral that began 0-2 and stretched to 0-6 at the start of last season.

"It's a new year, new teammates, a new energy, and it's just a matter of building on that," Cruz said. "I just have to make sure and bring that positive energy every day."

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