Eagles Make a Decision at Safety

Rodney McLeod won't return, while it was reported that Anthony Harris will be back; plus a safety that could draw the team's interest in the draft and Alex Singleton finds a new home

The Eagles have made a decision at safety: Anthony Harris is in; Rodney McLeod is out.

A team source said on Friday the Eagles will not bring back McLeod.

Also on Friday, The Athletic reported that Harris will return on a one-year contract. 

A year younger than McLeod, Harris played on a one-year deal last season after coming to Philadelphia from Minnesota, where he played the first six years of his career. He played in 14 of 17 games and was third in the team in tackles with 72 with one interception.

Meanwhile, the Eagles’ leading tackler the last two seasons, linebacker Alex Singleton, signed a one-year deal with the Denver Broncos on Friday night for $1.1 million with another $750,000 in playing time incentives, as NFL Media’s James Palmer reported.

There’s no telling how far down the alphabet you have to go to identify the plan that included a return for Harris, but plans A, B, C proved too costly. Those plans were likely Marcus Williams, Justin Reid, and Marcus Maye. All three went for big bucks early in free agency.

Perhaps Harris was Plan D.

The Eagles needed to do something at the position with only Marcus Epps and K’Von Wallace under contract.

Re-signing doesn’t force the Eagles into straying from their draft board to find one earlier than they would like.

Opting to make it Harris, and not McLeod, who returns makes some sense, too. McLeod has a recent injury history, with torn ACLs in 2018 and again in 2020.

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McLeod arrived as a free agent from the Rams in 2016 and spent six seasons with the Eagles, helping them win a Super Bowl in 2017. He played in 75 games with 11 interceptions. His end-zone pick of Washington’s Taylor Heinicke in the final seconds during the Eagles’ 20-17 win in Week 17 helped clinch a playoff spot this past season.

The Eagles are still expected to add a safety in the draft, but now they don’t have to force anything.

There will be plenty of targets on the second day, in rounds two and three.

One will certainly be Baylor’s Jalen Pitre.

Pitre’s coach, Dave Aranda, was at Harrah’s Atlantic City for the Maxwell Club Awards banquet, where he was honored with the George Munger Award and was asked about his safety.

“First of all, Jalen is a great human being and the core values you have on your team, Jalen will be an ambassador of that,” said Aranda. “Jalen will be a connector on your team. Jalen will be an empathetic leader. I think he is just drawn to that and he will rise to be that person. 

"On the field, he’s a gym rat man. He’s the guy in high school that is there way early, went to bed at the appropriate hour, studied on his own, ate the right stuff, hydrated the right way and got there way early, and stretched, did all the right stuff.

“There’s a gap between what you do and how you prepare and how you recover from what you do. Jalen owns that gap. There are guys in the pros who have played a long time that have learned how to master that gap between when they’re doing stuff and when they’re preparing, or preventing, or recovering and I think Jalen is already there.

"He’s going to bring that mindset. His study of the game and approach to it allows him to play faster. It’s a product of just who he is.”

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglestoday.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.