The Eagles turned the next-man-up approach into an art form last season, somehow managing to overcome one injury after another to key players and win a Super Bowl.
But sometimes, there just isn't a next man to be the next man up. The Eagles failed to address their need for safety depth sufficiently enough in the offseason, and Sunday, it came back to bite them in the butt.
Rodney McLeod might've been the most underappreciated member of the Eagles' defense. Malcolm Jenkins got all of the attention and the Pro Bowl invitations, but McLeod was every bit as valuable to the back end of that defense, and his absence played a big role in that unit's fourth-quarter collapse against Carolina.