The Eagles have struggled with run defense since the loss of Jordan Davis up the middle. Now they’ve lost Marlon Tuipulotu, as well.
The team hopes that veteran free agent Linval Joseph will be able to help with that as they officially announced the signing of the defensive tackle on Wednesday.
In a vacuum, this isn’t a terrible move to take a flier on as Joseph is among if not the top defensive tackle left on the market right now (others of note would include Sheldon Richardson and Malik Jackson).
Although he hasn’t played this season, he played the previous two seasons for the Chargers and the 10 seasons before that for the Giants and Vikings.
Joseph started to find his own in his third season with the Giants and was a force with the Vikings after that, making two Pro Bowls and landing on the NFL Top 100 in 2016 and 2018.
In the second half of the 2021 season, Joseph showed signs of slowing down. He recorded 57 tackles and a sack on the season, but only 16 of those tackles came after week eight when Joseph also missed some games.
It’s unclear whether the team will look to keep him around if and when Jordan Davis returns, but the Eagles appear to be banking on the fact that Joseph has had time to rest and recover so that he can serve as a force inside for the second half of this season. If he can perform in the second half as well as he did in the first half of 2021, it’d be a stellar pickup.
It could also be argued that part of the reason Joseph may have started to slow down what how heavily he was being used, playing somewhere between 60-80% of the snaps in 2021. That’s higher than what the Eagles figure to be looking for and could play into their favor.
The Eagles did have an open roster spot following the placement of Avonte Maddox on IR Monday, so they did not need to make a corresponding move in order to make the signing official.
