The defense of the week belongs to the New York Giants. They are facing a tough Dallas Cowboys offense that is feeling very confident now that Tony Romo is starting. This is an entirely different Cowboys offense with Romo at the helm and we've seen that week in and week out as they've increased the pace of the offense and are stepping up to the line of scrimmage expecting to make a big play. They are running the ball as well as they are throwing it and have shown a renewed discipline.

Needless to say, the Giants are going to have to get it going defensively to win this game. That's easier said than done simply because the Giants are still an injured team. They are getting Brandon Short, Osi Umenyiora and possibly Sam Madison back, which will help their cause a great deal.

The Giants must get pressure on Romo to have any chance of being successful. They need to force him to throw rushed passes into double coverage because he's been the king of beating single coverage since he's taken over the starting spot. If they can get one or two turnovers out of that, this team will be in very good shape.

Manning

The quarterback of the week is Eli Manning. Over the past few weeks he's been struggling with his consistency. That means that the onus doesn't just fall on him to get better, but also on offensive coordinator John Hufnagel to manage Manning's game and lead him to success. He should have less personnel packages and shifting to get him comfortable. Instead of full-field reads, the Giants should switch Manning to either/or reads to simplify what he needs to do. Once he gets his confidence back he'll start to look like the Eli Manning that we saw earlier this season.

That's not to take the blame completely off Manning's shoulders because he has lost the grasp on some of his basic fundamentals during this bad stretch. He's losing his balance when he throws and has shown poor footwork on occasion.

Editor's note: This week, Mark Schlereth will take a quick look at each game. You can check out his picks on the expert's picks page.

Kansas City at Cleveland: Larry Johnson has been an absolute beast this season and he's going to be extremely difficult for the Browns to stop.
Atlanta at Washington: The Redskins did a great job last week against Steve Smith and the Redskins cleaned up some of their defensive problems.
San Diego at Buffalo: Shawne Merriman is going to be very angry and will have fresh legs this week.
Minnesota at Chicago: Hopefully this will be a get-right game for Rex Grossman after last week's horrible performance.
New York Jets at Green Bay: The Jets are putting a lot of pressure on opposing quarterbacks and that doesn't bode well for Favre.
Colts at Titans: Right now the Colts' offense is just too balanced for the Titans.
Detroit at New England: The Patriots' defense will make the Lions one-dimensional.
San Francisco at New Orleans: Drew Brees is on pace to throw for over 5,000 yards and he's doing it with receivers seemingly getting injured every week.
Arizona at St. Louis: The Rams are running the ball very well, but haven't been the offensive juggernaut you'd have expected.
Jacksonville at Miami: The Jaguars continue to be an anomaly, but they are an excellent running team with Fred Taylor and can play physical football.
Houston at Oakland: This is the who-cares bowl.
Tampa Bay at Pittsburgh: The Steelers were embarrassed last week because defensive players were out of position trying to make plays. Bill Cowher won't let that happen again.
Dallas at New York Giants: Tony Romo has been tremendous and has overshadowed a great defense.
Seattle at Denver: Jay Cutler will be nervous and make mistakes, but we're going to see the Mike Shanahan offense run properly.
Carolina at Philadelphia: The Panthers baffle me, but John Fox gets the job done late in the season.