Giants Tender Larry Donnell; Victor Cruz Talks About Recovery

Larry Donnell – © USA TODAY Sports Images

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New York Giants Tender Larry Donnell: The New York Giants have tendered exclusive rights free agent tight end Larry Donnell. By tendering him with a 1-year, $585,000 contract, Donnell is now locked into re-signing with the New York Giants. Other teams cannot offer him a contract.

Donnell went from a little-known player to the team’s primary tight end in 2014, playing in all 16 games with 12 starts. Donnell finished the season with 63 catches for 623 yards and six touchdowns. His 63 receptions were tied for 9th-best among all NFL tight ends in 2014.

The only other exclusive rights free agent on the team is cornerback Chandler Fenner. It is not known yet if the Giants will tender Fenner.

A complete list of New York Giants free agents is available in the New York Giants 2015 Free Agency Scorecard section of the website.

Victor Cruz Talks About Recovery: New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz spoke about his recovery from the torn patella tendon he suffered last October on SiriusXM Radio on Wednesday.

“The injury’s going well, the rehab’s going very, very well,” Cruz said. “I’m a little more than halfway there, we’re building the strength back in my leg. The rehab’s been hard, it’s been difficult, it’s been long, it’s been grueling, but I’ve been going through it, man, and it’s definitely paying off now. The strength is coming back slowly but surely.

“I started running on this cool machine called the Alter-G, where it lets you run with a certain percentage of your body weight. And I just started doing that yesterday so it’s only a matter of time before I get out there on that field, so I’m excited about that.

“(The Giants’ medical staff does) a good job of when I’m feeling good, they still tell me things I need to hear to bring me back down to earth a little bit. So they do a good job of keeping me humble and keeping me mindful of the fact that I still have a little ways to go. These steps that I’ve taken so far have been great ones, and they always remind me to send me videos of myself eight weeks ago, ten weeks ago just to remind me how far I’ve come.

“Obviously the next couple of months are very, very important in terms of building the strength (in my knee) and continuing to mold my body back into running shape and things like that. And I just want to take these next couple of months to do that and really focus on that. Training camp is definitely the timetable. More importantly, even before training camp, I’ll be feeling almost 100 percent around May-ish, June-ish and I can really start rehabbing and strengthening it and start running routes and things like that, hopefully.”