FanHouse NFLpowerrankings

Someone has probably said before that you can't tell anything about the NFL playoff picture until the baseball season comes to a close. If they haven't, I just did and humbly submit that it should be the new credo of football watchers everywhere. The World Series will end before Week 9 kicks off, and it is a week suitably stuffed with games that will actually allow us to do more than guess about the fortunes of the NFL's 32 teams.

Blood will be spilled, hopes will be dashed and these power rankings will look radically different when this week's slate of games are completed. It's finally time to start seperating the men from the boys.

Look past the undefeated teams at the top of the Week 8 NFL Power Rankings, and you'll see a pair of familiar faces staring back at you in the fourth and fifth spots. Mike Tomlin and Bill Belichick have navigated some choppy early season waters and righted two of the AFC's stalwart ships in time to ensure that there won't be any dramatic changing of the guard in that conference this season. In both cases, it's been about getting back to basics.

The Steelers defense quieted its critics with a shutdown performance against the Vikings on Sunday, while the Patriots offense has looked like the 2007 version while ringing up blowout victories on both sides of the Atlantic. They're still looking up at the Colts and Broncos, of course, but if those are the top four when we get to January it should be a pretty spectacular fight for the AFC Championship.

The Saints are a clear choice for the top spot after the beating they put on the Giants Sunday, but things are a bit murkier thereafter. How good are the Vikings if their defense can't put teams away? Was that the worst of the Giants, or just the tip of the iceberg for a team that didn't play anyone all that good for the first five weeks? How did everyone in the country not named Josh McDaniels miss so badly on a Broncos team that looks better and better every week?

The clarity isn't helped much by an increasingly muddy midsection in each league. You've got teams like the Jets and Eagles making a mockery of their supporters and teams like the Jaguars and Cardinals offering reminders that a bad week or two early doesn't mean that all is lost. We're coming up fast on midseason and, as it should be, there are more questions than answers in the NFL.

If the NFL were college football, this weekend's matchup between the Giants and Saints would be a de facto National Championship game hyped to the heavens and back. Unlike the NCAA, though, the NFL decides its championship via football and not ballots which means that it is merely a great Week 6 contest that will help settle the top rung in mythical power rankings and, perhaps, serve as a whistle wetter for a NFC Championship Game.

It's still good stuff, but the most notable thing about the current state of power in the NFL these days is how few teams have any of it. There are an awful lot of no-hopers before the second month of the season has been completed which doesn't do much for the long-standing idea of parity being the end all, be all of the NFL.

There's a feeling of deja vu at the top of the rankings this week as each of the top four teams won and, therefore, held their positions. The biggest changes come at the rear where the Lions are finally looking down at something other than the bottom of the page. And it's not going too far out on a limb to say that their replacements will be a regular resident at the caboose of the rankings. The Browns are in disarray, more so than usual even, and show few signs of hope.

For those of you who are bored with the same old, same old up top, this week promises at least one change with the Saints and Jets facing off in a battle of undefeateds. The Ravens are in New England and the Broncos host the Cowboys, which might mean major changes in the top ten when next week's rankings come down the pike.

If ranking the 32 teams of the NFL is tough after only one week of games, doing it after two is tougher than Robert Gallery playing on a broken leg. Teams improve to 2-0 but drop in the rankings because their two wins came against the 31st- and 32nd-ranked teams. Elsewhere, teams find themselves ranked behind teams they've beaten, because a team that beat them in Week 1 looked terrible in Week 2. You don't like having that happen, but until there's more evidence to the contrary, the Steelers are above the Bears.

One thing that was clear, though, is that this was New York's week. The Giants pulled out a big win in Dallas to grab the top spot in the rankings, while the Jets jumped 10 spots on the back of their dominant defensive performance against the Patriots. The biggest fall belongs to the Eagles, because regardless of quarterback issues, you can't be that dismal on defense and remain in the top 10.

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.