Dan Graziano, senior NFL national reporter 9y

Tom Coughlin hopes Victor Cruz is back by Week 1 but won't rush him

PHOENIX -- New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz is making positive strides in his recovery from a torn patellar tendon, coach Tom Coughlin said Wednesday. But Coughlin is reluctant to predict a timetable for Cruz's return to the field.

During the NFC coaches breakfast at the NFL owners meetings here, Coughlin said the team was hoping to have Cruz back in time for training camp, but that even if they did that wouldn't necessarily mean a full return to action.

"I shouldn't say this, because medically I really don't have a definite answer, but by training camp hopefully, even if it's just to bring him," Coughlin said. "We're not going to just throw him to the wind. He'll work his way through. But I hope that would be the target."

Cruz tore his patellar tendon in the team's Week 6 loss in Philadelphia, had surgery a couple of days later and missed the rest of the 2014 season. Coughlin said Cruz has begun running and that he saw him working out with trainers in the field house in East Rutherford, New Jersey, recently. But he indicated that Cruz's recovery could stretch into the season and compared it to the delayed start Odell Beckham Jr. got last year off of his training camp hamstring pull.

"I think he'll be the player that he was, and hopefully better," Coughlin said of Cruz. "But as far as when, I would be careful of what I would say there. Hopefully it's the first game. But if it isn't, you know we've done that one before. We just went through it. But I'm hoping it would be."

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