Linval Joseph’s and Ndamukong Suh’s fine play let Howie Roseman bask in the Eagles’ big win over the Colts

INDIANAPOLIS — Standing outside the visitors’ locker room at Lucas Oil Stadium, Howie Roseman offered fist pounds and high fives to all the Eagles coaches and players who disappeared through the doorway. He bounced on the balls of his feet, as if he were psyching himself up to share a macho moment with some of them, and Fletcher Cox was happy to oblige.

“Yeah, Howie!” Cox said.

“Yeah, Fletch!” Roseman said.

Hug. Chest bump.

“Ain’t gonna all be pretty!” Cox said.

This one Sunday sure wasn’t, but it was an Eagles victory just the same, 17-16 over the Colts, skin-of-the-teeth stuff, and Roseman could feel justified for bro-hugging Cox and Brandon Graham and feeling that he, as much as anyone, had lent his team its winning edge. For all the penalties and turnovers and puzzling coaching decisions that held the Eagles back, that nearly cost them the game, their defense was their saving grace, and it was the newest, oldest members of the defensive line rotation who made maybe the most meaningful contributions.

Neither Linval Joseph, 34, nor Ndamukong Suh, 35, had played a snap this season before Roseman signed them last week — Joseph on Wednesday, Suh on Thursday. But the two of them looked 10 years younger Sunday, combining for seven tackles and splitting a sack of Matt Ryan, helping to keep the Colts out of the end zone after an opening-drive touchdown.

Graham, 34, got in on the Cocoon sequel, too, bull-rushing left tackle Bernhard Raimann to sack Ryan for a 7-yard loss on the Colts’ final, fruitless possession. Yet it was Joseph and Suh, acquired to fill in for injured rookie Jordan Davis and provide depth at tackle, who were the keys to fixing what had most ailed this defense lately. In the Eagles’ two previous games, the Houston Texans and Washington Commanders had pushed them around at the line of scrimmage, had run the ball pretty much at will against them. After carrying seven times for 49 yards on Indianapolis’ first possession, though, Jonathan Taylor managed just 39 yards on 15 carries the rest of the game, and for at least this week, and maybe for longer, Jonathan Gannon’s unit was stouter and stronger because of Joseph and Suh.

“I’ve been telling people: Age is just a number,” Joseph said. “Coming off the couch, two surgeries, nobody wanted to give me a chance. They gave me a chance, and I want to go out there and show the world I’ve still got it — doesn’t matter how old I am.”

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He was asked what the hardest part of getting here was.

“Getting here was,” he said. “One day, it was a call. The next day, I’m on a plane. The next day, I’m at practice. Only been here four days. I feel like I handled it good. I did my job.”

That’s all the Eagles are asking of Joseph and Suh: do their jobs. “For the most part, I can continue to play at a high level and get off the ball, which is what I was always taught,” Suh said. “They have to block me. I don’t have to block them.” The two of them have a combined 26 seasons in the NFL and seven Pro Bowl appearances, but they don’t necessarily need to be such dominant forces now, though they showed Sunday that, in small doses, they can be.

If anything, they felt liberated in Gannon’s scheme. Because they have been on the team for less than a week and are still studying up on the system’s terminology, they were handed relatively simple assignments. No muss, no fuss. Just shed their blockers and swallow up the ballcarrier, like they’ve been doing for years.

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“They’ve played a lot of football in his league and they’re fresh, so I don’t feel one bit of sorry for them,” said center Jason Kelce, who, being 35 himself and having played all 10 of the Eagles’ games this season, felt free to kid around about Joseph and Suh. “They should be out there dominating.”

Then Kelce stopped chuckling.

“We knew getting both of those guys here was going to make an impact,” he said. “I’ve played enough against both of them to know not just the physical nature that they both bring, but also the mentality, how intelligent they are. To stack that on to a defense that, I think, is already pretty dang loaded and only getting better, that was a really, really good performance.”

No wonder Roseman was grinning and giving shout-outs to Cox and Graham and even Gardner Minshew (“I see you, Wash State!”) and to everyone else in Eagles green after the game. Those timely acquisitions of his had paid off handsomely and immediately, had saved the Philadelphia region a Thanksgiving week full of panic, and it was hard to begrudge him basking in Sunday’s success. It sure wasn’t pretty, but it counted just the same. To Howie Roseman, it probably counted more than most.