A 53-man roster is a complex puzzle that is constantly evolving, improving, maturing. The version that Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman and the Eagles put forth on Tuesday is the first of this 2024 season, subject to change as you understand very well, and now turning its full attention to September 6 and the Green Bay Packers in Brazil.

What to make of the initial roster? It is the best 53 of the eventual 70 (including a 17-man practice squad) and the team will gather on Wednesday morning at the NovaCare Complex and hear Head Coach Nick Sirianni deliver the most important message: All focus is in everything we do. The mission doesn't change. Your challenge every day is to hone in on your game and your improvement and to do whatever is needed to help the Philadelphia Eagles win.

The story of Tuesday is not that the Eagles kept six defensive tackles, perhaps the most "surprising" of which was Thomas Booker, whom not many fans knew but who put an offseason of hard work into a preseason of production and jumped out too much to ignore on the final 53. The story was not keeping 11 defensive backs plus another, second-year man Sydney Brown on the Physically Unable To Perform list. However, Roseman did reference the '23 season and said he put coaches in "a not good enough spot" by not equipping them with enough weapons there, so the defensive backfield was a "big offseason priority" and the Eagles treated it as such.

When you look and make note that the Eagles have only one "true" center, Cam Jurgens, on the 53-man roster, you are not giving Roseman and the coaching staff credit for thinking through every scenario – who might be on the practice squad and elevated for the game against Green Bay, or who on the roster has played center previously in his career – Landon Dickerson, if you remember, was at one time considered by many out in the hottakeasphere as the "heir apparent" to Jason Kelce should he ever retire. Or for those who might wonder how the Eagles could play 12 personnel with only two tight ends on the roster? Just know that Roseman and company always have a plan and then a backup plan and then a plan after that.

At the end of the day – in this case, 4 PM on Tuesday when all NFL rosters were reduced to 53 players – the Eagles kept their best 53. For now. In the course of a long, 17-game regular season, every player is going to have value. The practice squad is critical to the season's success and the work the entire personnel department has done to this point will manifest itself in the moves the Eagles make in the hours and days and even weeks ahead.

It pays to be prepared for everything.

"We have a lot of uncertainty. We have a lot of work here to do, too, as a staff," Roseman said, "with all the players that are available. Any upgrade, even incrementally, that helps the team, we're looking for here.

"We're incomplete right now. We're at 53, but we really view it as a 70-man roster."

The takeaway is that the Eagles are one step closer to the regular season. They made it through a full Training Camp and three preseason games as healthy as a team can be – knocking on wood profusely and only speaking of the past – and, hey, let's go. The pieces of the puzzle are snug and in place right now, but they are going to change and move around and the complexion of the roster is going to change.

What matters now is winning football games that count in the standings, and that is the focus for the Philadelphia Eagles as the 2024 kickoff nears.