A few NFL scenarios still need to play out this weekend, the final one of the regular season, but the AFC and NFC playoff fields are mostly set.

Among the certainties is that the Giants and Patriots will be competing in the postseason, and according to New York wide receiver Victor Cruz, New England would prefer not to face his team in the Super Bowl.

“They don’t want to see us,” Cruz told the New York Daily News this week. “I’m sure if you ask them (they’d say) they’d play anybody, they don’t care. I’m sure they don’t want to see us. That’s for sure.”

Cruz is right that Bill Belichick’s Patriots would never express a desire to face or avoid any particular squad. But the veteran wide receiver may be on to something, at least in terms of his squad conjuring up unsettlingly painful playoff memories for New England.

Arguably the NFL’s greatest dynasty, the Patriots have known almost nothing but enormous success since 2001. A big part of that “almost,” though is a pair of Super Bowl losses to the Giants, New England’s only setbacks in six trips to the championship round with Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady.

With the Patriots on the verge of getting the AFC’s No. 1 seed, and with the Oakland Raiders, losing star quarterback Derek Carr to a broken fibula, New England is heavily favored to reach another Super Bowl. The Giants, locked into the NFC’s fifth seed, appear to have a tougher road, but then again, they did in the 2007 and 2011 seasons, as well, and in both of those years they used wild-card wins to spring playoff runs that resulted in upsets of the powerful Pats.

At the risk of looking too far ahead, Cruz was asked for his reaction to a possible third Giants-Pats Super Bowl.

“Oh man, you can’t even put it into words almost,” Cruz said.

“For it to be round three, us and them in another epic Super Bowl showdown. It’d be for all the marbles. The third time is when, I mean they’ll have a lot riding on it, we will have a lot riding on it. It’ll just be one of those moments you (couldn’t) forget.”

He added, “When you play a team twice in the Super Bowl, once when they were undefeated, the second when they were pretty darn good – we beat them both times and that’s going to live forever. But it’s definitely a rivalry.”