Ryan Mathews suffered a herniated disk in Week 16 and will miss the Philadelphia Eagles' Week 17 finale against the Dallas Cowboys.

The Eagles are mathematically eliminated, while the Cowboys have clinched home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. 

Mathews rushed for 661 yards on 155 carries and eight touchdowns in 2016.

The NFL has very teams this season that excel in all facets of the game. Further evidence of this issue shows itself in the fact that there is only one team ranking in the top-10 in both Football Outsiders' Offensive and Defensive DVOA: the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers are 9-5 after winning five straight games and must beat the Baltimore Ravens in Week 16 to ensure their place in the playoffs. Pittsburgh ranks third in total DVOA and first in Weighted DVOA.

Last season, the Seattle Seahawks, Carolina Panthers, Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals and Kansas City Chiefs ranked in the top-10 on both sides of the ball. The Chiefs are the closest team to joining the Steelers in the top-10 in both Offensive and Defensive DVOA at 13th and 12th.

The Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots rank first and second overall in DVOA as they rank second and third, respectively in Offensive DVOA but 20th and 19th in Defensive DVOA. The Atlanta Falcons rank first in Offensive DVOA, 27th in Defensive and fourth overall. The Green Bay Packers and Oakland Raiders have similar splits as the Cowboys and Patriots, while the Seahawks, Baltimore Ravens and New York Giants are the inverse of those teams with top-5 defenses and offenses below the NFL mean.

The Philadelphia Eagles are unlikely to make any major changes this offseason, meaning Doug Pederson will be back for his second season as head coach.

"Coming into the season, they were expecting to be at least a year away, potentially even more," Ian Rapoport mentioned on NFL GameDay Morning First. "There's a lot of reasons for that. First of all, take a look at what happened last offseason before Chip Kelly's final year. They were simply gutted of personnel. They knew they needed to beef up the kind of skill players they had. They knew they needed a quarterback. So they made the decision as an organization to actively rebuild, find a quarterback and avoid the 9-7, are we good enough, are we not type of thing. They wanted to start over and try to restock."

Carson Wentz has been inconsistent at quarterback as a rookie but has generally shown promise.

Carson Wentz is the NFL's lowest-rated passer since Week 6 and the Philadelphia Eagles are working to help him change that.

After Sunday's loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, Philadelphia's sixth in their last seven games, Doug Pederson attributed the slump to mechanical flaws that many saw in Wentz at North Dakota State.

"Strictly mechanics," Pederson said. "... Young quarterback, missed quite a bit of time in the preseason, but now we have to keep cleaning this thing up."

Wentz works daily on his mechanics with offensive coordinator Frank Reich and quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. Pederson admitted that the overhaul would be more complete if his rookie was still sitting behind a veteran quarterback.

"These are some of the decisions that I made back when the (Sam Bradford) trade was made," Pederson said. "These were going to be some of the pains we were going to have to go through, and just him understanding and him learning and us growing together as an offense, he and I growing as coach and quarterback together, it's all part of the process."

Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich says that the team's recent slide is wearing on rookie Carson Wentz.

After opening the season 3-0, the Eagles have dropped seven of their last nine games and Wentz's play has tailed off as well.

Reich said that the "most confident quarterbacks in the world lose their confidence and get battered" at times.

"Well, for a while I thought he seemed totally unflappable," Reich said. "Now, in some of the more recent losses, do you sense that this is, 'Okay, he's feeling this one, he's feeling this one?' Yeah, we're all feeling it. I think he was that young, naive -- in a good sense -- but still very mature guy who came in and it was like, 'Nothing is going to get this guy down.' But it wears on you. It wears on you. Losing wears on you in this league. That's why you've got to have the mental toughness. You've got to have the mental toughness because it's a grind, and it's especially a grind when you're not winning the games that you want to win and you lose close games. You have to have the tenacity to fight out of it and not get too down. He has that."

The Philadelphia Eagles are expected to pursue DeSean Jackson in free agency.

Multiple teams believe Jackson, who will be an unrestricted free agent after the season, could return to Philadelphia. 

Washington is unlikely to use the franchise tag on Jackson.

Jackson and Doug Pederson are said to be big admirers of each other.

Jackson spent his first six seasons in Philadelphia, reaching three Pro Bowls and posting 356 receptions for 6,117 yards and 32 touchdowns, before signing with Washington prior to the 2014 season.

Doug Pederson made an odd decision to challenge a two-yard gain in the third quarter of the Philadelphia Eagles' loss to the Green Bay Packers on Monday night.

Pederson now regrets the call, which left the Eagles without any challenges for the remainder of the game.

"We do have a process with the coaches upstairs and the information we're seeing and the camera angles and different things like that to make those choices," he said. "That second one, I probably would have kept it. It was a two-yard gain — 2nd-and-8."

Despite losing that two-yard gain on Pederson's challenge, the Packers scored on the drive.