FanHouse NFLPowerRankings

A week from now, 20 NFL teams' seasons will be over, and 12 NFL teams will be getting ready to decide for themselves which one is the best. But for now, we've got one more week of sorting it in our NFL Power Rankings.

How do we figure out this NFL season? The Giants have been the best team in the NFC all year, but after Sunday's loss the surging Panthers could catch them. The Titans have been the best team in the AFC all year, but after Sunday's loss the surging Steelers could catch them.

Yes, we've got a wonderful pair of games on Sunday, with the Top 4 teams in our NFL Power Rankings taking each other on and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs on the line. Our rankings of the Big 4 -- and the other 28 -- are below.

The Giants lost on Sunday, and with Plaxico Burress out, the offense had its worst game of the season.

So does that make me re-assess my opinion that the Giants are just fine without Burress? Not really. I still believe that the defending champions are fine at wide receiver, with Domenik Hixon, Amani Toomer, Steve Smith and Sinorice Moss. Eli Manning might not exactly be happy about the way Burress took himself out of the season, but he still has plenty of options available to him when he drops back and scans the field.

And, of course, they've got plenty of good players elsewhere. Which means that despite that loss, there's no change at the top of this week's NFL power rankings.

The Giants lost wide receiver Plaxico Burress for the season, and I really don't see any reason to believe that changes their status as the top team in the league.

Last year, things would have been different: Burress was by far the Giants' top receiver in 2007, with 11 more catches than anyone else on the team, 265 more receiving yards than anyone else on the team and nine more receiving touchdowns than anyone else on the team.

This year, though, things are different. Burress is fourth on the team in catches, second in yards and second in touchdowns, and the two games he's missed (Oct. 5 against Seattle and Sunday against Washington) were two of the Giants' most impressive wins this year. Burress is a talented wide receiver, but in this week's NFL power rankings, the Giants remain No. 1 without him.

Now that the Titans have lost, we're all in agreement that the Giants are the best team in the NFL. But who's the second best?

Crazy as this would have sounded just a couple of weeks ago, I think it's the New York Jets.

No, the Jets haven't been the second-best team in the league over the course of the entire season -- not even close. They played some ugly football in losses to the Patriots, Chargers and Raiders. But the way the Jets look right now, with Brett Favre playing his best football of the season and Kris Jenkins looking like the defensive player of the year, I think New York has football's two best teams.

On to this week's NFL power rankings.

It's hard to remember now, but Giants fans were furious after the 2006 season, when the Giants lost their wild-card playoff game and the team didn't fire head coach Tom Coughlin, as fans were almost unanimous in saying they should.

At the time, Coughlin was out of touch and unable to motivate today's athletes, and his conservative approach was outdated and ineffective. Or so we all thought.

Now, of course, it turns out that the Giants are the best team in the league, and they're the best team in the league exactly because they're playing Tom Coughlin football: Tough, physical, disciplined football. Fascinating how that works.

No surprise, Coughlin's Giants are atop our NFL Power Rankings, thanks to the tough, physical, disciplined football players up front.

Titans fans don't like it, but I think a consensus is emerging that the defending champion Giants are the best team in football. They're good on offense, good on defense, good on special teams and they showed last postseason that they play well in big games.

After the Giants come the undefeated Titans, whose fans believe they're not getting as much respect as they deserve as the league's only undefeated team. But who's No. 3? That's where the real debate begins in FanHouse's NFL power rankings, which begin below.

The Tennessee Titans just keep winning, and when there's only one undefeated team in the NFL, the easy thing to do is to keep that team atop the NFL power rankings.

Of course, if you just rank the teams in order of their records, doesn't that kind of defeat the point of power rankings? After all, if that's all you want, you can just look at the NFL standings.

That's what I wrestled with in this week's power rankings: Do I keep the Titans on top because they're the last undefeated team? Or do I think the defending champion Giants have been more impressive, all things considered?

Find out below.

The Tennessee Titans had their biggest test of the season on Monday night, and they passed it in convincing fashion, beating up the Colts and solidifying their spot atop the AFC South standings and our power rankings.

But Tennessee-Indianapolis was far from the only big game of the weekend, as the Giants' win over the Steelers, the Cowboys' win over the Buccaneers, the Eagles' win over the Falcons and the Panthers' win over the Cardinals all helped shape the NFL playoff race.

We examine the state of the NFL season through eight weeks in our weekly NFL power rankings.

Can the Indianapolis Colts test the Tennessee Titans on Monday night? If they can't, the Titans have nearly locked up the AFC South. Of all the strange happenings in this NFL season, the Titans' dominance -- with Kerry Collins at quarterback, no less -- is the strangest of all.

So it's no surprise that the Titans remain atop our NFL power rankings. The surprises will have to come from the teams in the vast middle of this parity-filled league.