Giants' WR Victor Cruz runs at practice, says "Week 12 looks promising"

On the New York Giants' lengthy injury report, Victor Cruz was listed as "Did Not Practice."

However, he took an important step just the same. For the first time since his first attempted comeback on Sept. 30th, Cruz was running on the sideline.

Back in September, when Cruz first walked off the field after attempting to run and simply not feeling the "burst" that he was accustomed to, there were immediate calls to put the slot receiver on the injured reserve, either with the designation to return or season ending. The Giants, however, elected to continue to carry Cruz on the active roster and keep the DTR tag in their back pocket.

Cruz was one of several players to get MRIs earlier in the week, and he received good news.

The MRI’s are clean, the MRI’s look good. It’s just a matter of how I feel and a matter of how it feels as we begin to pick up the speed and pick up the tempo and see how the calf continues to hold up," Cruz said on Thursday.

Cruz wasn't sprinting full-out. The Giants will take their time and build up to that over the coming weeks. Cruz and the Giants both need to exercise patience and rebuild his strength, speed, and stamina without taking a step back with either his knee or calf.

While there is still no timeline, the Giants Week 12 game against Washington, after the Giants' Week 11 bye, "looks promising," according to Cruz.

As much as the Giants and fans want to see this, nobody may be more anxious than Cruz.

"Just emotionally more than physically. Physically, I can handle it. Emotionally, you kind of have your heart set on getting back. I go through these emotions where I feel good, the knee is responding well in the training camp, I’m feeling good, I’m making some plays, then I have the calf. Then you get back from the calf, you feel like it’s good again, and you go out there and run, then it happens again," Cruz said. "So just kind of going up and down emotionally has been a little bit of a roller coaster for me this year. I have gotten to the point where I just need to relax, settle down, and really listen to my body, really listen to what it’s saying, and really take my time with it. I’m not doing this organization a disservice of going out there and not being 100 percent and I’m not doing myself a disservice by going out there and potentially reinjuring something."