Giants' Defensive Line Didn't Get Fixed by the Okoye Trade. It Got Smaller.

John Harbaugh said Saturday the Giants aren't done addressing their defensive line. The next day, the position group he was talking about had six players on it, after the team cut or released six defensive linemen over the same weekend it traded for one.

The Giants acquired defensive lineman C.J. Okoye from the Baltimore Ravens on Aug. 29 for a 2028 seventh-round pick, reuniting him with Harbaugh and defensive line coach Dennis Johnson, both of whom coached him in Baltimore, according to the Ravens' team website. Asked afterward whether the trade closes the book on the position, Harbaugh didn't say yes. "Yeah, we're still looking, but I don't want to rule out anything else either," he said. "It's not like we aren't looking everywhere. It's not like we're scouring the waiver wire for players." The remarks were reported by SI On SI's Patricia Traina from the press conference Saturday.

Harbaugh also said the roster is close to finished. "We're really happy with our roster. I feel like we've got all the players in place that we need," he said, according to Big Blue Interactive's account of the same session. "At the same time, if there's an opportunity to improve ourselves somewhere along the way, we will." Both quotes come from the same press conference; no transcript or video of the session was located independently for this story. Big Blue Interactive's separate account of the same press conference reports matching wording for the "still looking" remarks.

The Giants carried 11 defensive linemen into cutdown weekend: D.J. Reader, Josh Tupou, Leki Fotu, Chauncey Golston, Darius Alexander, Zacch Pickens, Marlon Davidson, Shelby Harris, Anquin Barnes Jr., Ben Barten and Bobby Jamison-Travis, per the team's official roster page. By the time the initial 53-man roster was set Sunday, Fotu had been terminated as a vested veteran the day before, Davidson and Tupou were terminated on the same designation Sunday, and Pickens, Barnes Jr. and Barten had been waived, according to Giants.com's official transaction announcement. Okoye was the only addition. The confirmed defensive line on the initial 53 is six players: Alexander, Golston, Harris, Jamison-Travis, Okoye and Reader.

Some of that attrition traces to the offseason plan to replace Dexter Lawrence, who was traded to the Cincinnati Bengals in April for the No. 10 overall pick. The Giants added Reader, Harris, Fotu, Pickens and Tupou in the months since, along with draftee Jamison-Travis, an approach AtoZ Sports has characterized as spreading the position across several depth pieces rather than one replacement. Three of those additions were gone by the time the 53 was set: Fotu released Saturday, Pickens and Tupou released Sunday.

The Ravens' own team website framed the trade as a reunion between Harbaugh and Okoye. AtoZ Sports separately described it as another example of Harbaugh reaching back to his former team. That's accurate at the roster level — a March report from Fox Sports and The Associated Press counted four Giants additions with Ravens ties under Harbaugh: fullback Patrick Ricard, tight end Isaiah Likely, defensive back Ar'Darius Washington and punter Jordan Stout, all free-agent signings. None of them play defensive line. Okoye is the first defensive lineman that pipeline has produced for the Giants.

Gervon Dexter is the clearest defensive tackle name connected to the Giants this month, and he's no longer available. NFL insider Jordan Schultz reported that Chicago's trade market for Dexter included the Giants and the New Orleans Saints, with the Atlanta Falcons winning the bidding before cutdown. Separately, USA Today Giants reporter Art Stapleton wrote on his X account that the Giants should pursue a trade for Dexter — a personal recommendation posted on social media, not a report that the front office made an offer, and the two shouldn't be read as the same thing.

What's left is a market with volume but no reported fit. NFL teams released a wave of defensive tackles and ends at Sunday's cutdown, including Devonnsha Maxwell and Eric Johnson (Atlanta), Rayshaun Benny (Baltimore), four linemen from Cleveland's roster, Emmanuel Ogbah (Kansas City), Devean Deal (the Rams), four from New Orleans, Dean Lowry (Pittsburgh) and Titus Leo (San Francisco), according to CBS Sports' roster-cuts tracker. No report found connects any of them, or any other available lineman, to the Giants specifically.

The next concrete data point on whether Harbaugh's comment turns into another move is procedural: the Giants hold the fifth waiver-claim priority in the league, and that claiming window closes at 1 p.m. ET Monday.