PHOENIX — Ndamukong Suh sings softly of the multitudes he contains. “I have a lot of different dimensions,” he said one day in the Eagles’ locker room, on a rare occasion when he was in the Eagles’ locker room at the same time that media members were.
A University of Nebraska alumnus, he calls Warren Buffett a friend. A Portland native and Nike endorser, he trains daily each offseason at the LeBron James Innovation Center in Beaverton and has had business sitdowns with John Donahoe, who is the company’s chief executive officer, and several higher-ups in the apparel department. He opened his own Nike store years ago.
“I love these yoga pants,” he said, tugging at the olive-green leggings he was wearing, “and I was wondering if they’d come out with new versions and what they would look like. Fortunately, Nike affords me a lot of different opportunities. I can get a hold of people.”
The Eagles signed him for that very reason — he gets a hold of people — just not how he meant it. Suh is just the kind of player a team looking to make a championship push often acquires and should acquire: a once-great player who can fill a role, who can be excellent or even dominant once in a while because he isn’t on the field all the time anymore. Just last Sunday, in the NFC championship game, he made his most consequential play since joining the Eagles, all 6 feet, 4 inches, and 313 pounds of him surging forward and slamming into the arm of 49ers quarterback Josh Johnson, forcing Johnson out of the game with a concussion after his head slammed against the Lincoln Financial Field turf.
It was a glimpse of Suh as he was in his prime, when he was a three-time All-Pro tackle, a member of the 2010s’ All-Decade Team, and the NFL’s defensive rookie of the year. Now he’s 36 and on his fifth team in 13 seasons, playing 20-25 snaps a game as a member of the Eagles’ relentless rotation of defensive linemen, a self-described introvert who carries with him a hard history somehow co-exists with the other sides of his personality.
Remember: This is a man who was voted the dirtiest player in the NFL. Who has been suspended twice (one of those suspensions was overturned) and accumulated more than $600,000 in fines. Who kicked one quarterback in the groin and stepped on another’s calf. Who cleated an offensive lineman in the arm. This is also a man who wields enough respect and esteem within the Nebraska football community that, when former Temple coach Matt Rhule was hired there, one of his first phone calls was to Suh. His desire to dominate seemed always to push him too far.
So how does anyone square all those Suhs?
“It’s simple,” he said. “I’m an aggressive player. I play a position where I’m attacking, being very aggressive toward offensive linemen, quarterbacks, running backs. Playing at an elite level, you always want to play close to the edge but not over the edge. There are people who make decisions in regards to fines, some who have played, some who haven’t played, and they have their different viewpoints of what’s over the line and what’s not over the line. You go from there.”
The NFL hasn’t fined him since 2018. Does it bother him that people probably think of him, still, as a dirty player?
“It doesn’t bother me because they haven’t taken the time to sit down with me one-on-one and have a conversation with me,” he said. “You can’t call me something that has not consistently shown itself. Off the field, you don’t see that in my daily life. None of my teammates say it, which is the most important thing — none of my coaches. Obviously, I’m here for a reason. They like the way I’ve been able to progress throughout my career, and they believe I can still play at a high level, which I believe, as well.”
Suh has never missed a game because of an injury in his career. Yet he was unemployed, at home with his wife and their twin sons, when this season began and remained unemployed until mid-November. His choice, he said. He’d had other offers before the Eagles called him, but he was picky about his decision. Having played in two Super Bowls previously, losing one with the Rams, winning one with the Buccaneers, he regarded anything short of a shot at another as a waste of his time.
“I wasn’t going to go to any old team,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to a place I didn’t feel comfortable with and didn’t feel that I had an opportunity to be successful and win. I’m not going to name names, but there’s a team right now in the bottom half of the NFL that really wanted me before the season started, and I said, ‘I just don’t see it.’
“I had the opportunity to pave the way and represent my position in an elite manner. Having seen the likes of the Warren Sapps, all these different guys I’ve been able to meet throughout the years, I’d say, ‘I really respect the way you guys play. I want to pay homage to you.’ But I also want to show what I was doing, the hard work I’ve put in. And I’ve been able to do that the last 13 years.”
What’s the old Richard Ben Cramer line about Ted Williams? Few men try for best ever … Ndamukong Suh is one. He has tried, too. He is still trying. There are boardrooms yet to enter and power brokers yet to meet and comers yet to crush in those worlds away from football, and until he conquers them, he might have to settle for being the baddest defensive lineman ever, for being a Hall of Famer with two Super Bowl rings and a rough reputation. It’s a deal he’ll take.
