PHILADELPHIA — They were devastated on so many levels, on the scoreboard by the Eagles, 27-0, and in their hearts on the Black Sunday they lost Victor Cruz for the season with a torn right patella tendon.
Cruz had become a fallen brother trying to catch a 3-yard touchdown pass from Eli Manning, and the sight of him clutching his knee and writhing in pain was unbearable to them. One by one, as the dreaded cart came for Cruz, his teammates patted him on the shoulder pad, but Cruz was sobbing inconsolably into his red and white gloves and probably felt nothing and heard nothing.
Because he knew. Knew there would be no more salsa in 2014.
“It’s difficult for me and difficult for them,” Ronnie Barnes, the longtime Giants director of medical services, told The Post.
Barnes, who has taken care of so many Giants, from Wellington Mara to Lawrence Taylor and now Cruz, was asked if Cruz had said anything to him.
“No, not really,” Barnes said. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
Barnes was asked what he said to Cruz.
“I said we’d take good care of him,” he said.
Cruz stayed overnight in Philadelphia. He will be examined Monday in New York.
“That’s a terrible sight, especially to your brother,” Larry Donnell said. “Just praying for him.”
Next Man Up is a painful reality in the NFL.
“I’m thinking about Victor, and hopefully he can heal up quickly and whether surgery’s invoiced or whatnot, I don’t know all the details, but hopefully he can heal up quickly and get back to playing football,” Manning said.
They turned out the lights on Eli Manning on Black Sunday, buried him first under an avalanche of belligerence and cold-blooded killer instinct, reduced him to Li’l Eli, only this time without the wedgie.
Li’l Eli, and Li’l Giants.
And no more Victor Cruz.
A captain’s season over too soon, his team’s season severely sprained.
The Eagles were the ones who walked the talk, who showed the Giants what a first-place team in the NFC East looks like.
And when Black Sunday ended, not long before Black Monday was about to begin, the postgame meal in the visitors’ locker room was crow.
If ever Tom Coughlin needed a “Talk is cheap, play the game” teaching tool for his Giants, here it was.
See Jason Pierre-Paul stomping on the Eagles emblem during warm-ups. See JPP and Li’l Blue once the game started.
Pardon the Eagles if they left the building thinking the 3-3 Giants could easily have been 2-3.
Either way, they suddenly face a critical game Sunday in Dallas against the rampaging Cowboys, who silenced the 12th Man in Seattle to reach 5-1 before the Eagles did.
Pardon the Eagles for believing they are closer to their first Super Bowl championship than the Giants of Prince Amukamara and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie are to their fifth.
Nick Foles was the better quarterback in no small part because the defense he faced all but allowed him to stand in the pocket and eat a cheesesteak from Pat’s or Geno’s.
The Eagles played faster and more physical from the jump. Manning was sacked five times in the first half and it was 20-0 by intermission. That is all the more galling when you consider that Manning dropped back only 13 times in the first half, got off only eight passes.
Manning was strip-sacked on third-and-short by Connor Barwin on his first possession, and was fortunate that John Jerry recovered it.
It was 10-0 by the time Manning got the ball back, because Foles and LeSean McCoy and tight end Zach Ertz were dictating terms of the engagement to Big Blue.
Then came a Trent Cole sack against Justin Pugh and the house of horrors and the Eagles defense were in a frenzy and so Manning called timeout before third-and-19. A 20-yard completion over the middle to tight end Daniel Fells validated it.
But following sacks by Vinny Curry and Barwin, the Linc erupted in a chorus of “Giants Suck, Giants Suck.”
The Eagles were playing with a fury and a passion and a swagger the Giants could not match.
Everywhere Andre Williams went, the Eagles went with him, and Manning must have felt as if the ghosts of Reggie White and Jerome Brown were chasing and suffocating him.
When Foles faked a handoff left to McCoy and rolled right to hit a wide-open James Casey running loose in Perry Fewell’s secondary for a 26-yard TD, it was 17-0 and they were singing “Fly, Eagles, Fly.”
The Giants were unraveling, becoming unglued. Rookie guard Weston Richburg dove on a fallen Fletcher Cox for an unnecessary roughness penalty that sabotaged Manning’s next possession.
“They wanted it more,” JPP said.
Black Sunday … And Cruz Blues.