Sometimes, one team’s unavoidable roster crunch is just an invitation for your stadium roommates to swoop in and pick up the pieces.
Just days after the New York Giants waived undrafted rookie defensive lineman Ben Barten to clear a 90-man roster spot for linebacker Anfernee Orji, the cross-stadium little brother New York Jets pounced. Gang Green officially signed the former Wisconsin Badger on Saturday, ensuring he only had to walk down a different hallway in MetLife to find his new home.
If we’re operating out of the trust tree, nobody’s losing sleep over an undrafted rookie changing teams.
But this quick waiver-wire transaction is a testament to how far general manager Joe Schoen has brought this roster. It showed that even the guys the G-Men throw back into the pond are instantly fished out by other NFL teams -- a trend further evidenced by the New England Patriots recently scooping up fellow former Giants UDFA defensive lineman Casey Rogers.
Ben Barten’s quick landing says more about the Giants than the Jets
Barten was simply the first inevitable victim of a brutal 90-man roster numbers game.
Schoen spent the entire offseason aggressively overhauling the defensive line, stacking the unit with veteran additions like D.J. Reader, Shelby Harris, and Leki Fotu alongside rookies like Bobby Jamison-Travis and Anquin Barnes Jr.
The room became so crowded that the 6-foot-5, 324-pound Big Ten DT was viewed as expendable before the first padded practices even got underway.
The fact that the Jets immediately claimed Barten says something about how much deeper the Giants’ roster has become. In previous years, New York was the one desperately searching for functional depth, praying for scrap-heap additions to fill out the backend of the roster.
Now the tables are finally starting to turn. The Giants can part ways with a fringe depth piece knowing he's at least talented enough to have a shot at sticking on a practice squad somewhere else in the league.
The move to bring in Barten also highlights the cold calculus of early August football. To fit the 24-year-old onto their roster, the Jets cut rookie long snapper Garrison Grimes -- a prospect who made waves with a historically perfect 10.0 Relative Athletic Score (RAS) -- after two training camp practices.
Let's not make more out of this than what it actually is. Barten was a summer tryout player who spent a couple of months in the building, and his departure doesn't change the outlook of the Giants' defense.
But the fact that he and Rogers are landing on NFL rosters is the real takeaway here. Schoen just wanted to bring Orji in to look at some extra off-ball depth behind Arvell Reese and Tremaine Edmunds. If the bottom of his roster is good enough to get scooped up by rivals to fill their own depth voids, it means the baseline talent in East Rutherford is finally heading in the right direction.
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