Mike Celizic

On the PGA Tour, Saturday is known as moving day. It’s the three-quarter pole of the tournament, and it’s the day when the players who will contend on Sunday for the title separate themselves from the field.

Week 12 on the NFL schedule has that potential. It's a week when teams will be setting themselves up for the drive to the playoffs.

Leading the way, as they have all year, are the Giants and the Titans. The best of the NFC and of the AFC kept their great seasons going in Week 11. The 9-1 Giants bullied the Ravens, smashing through the great Baltimore run defense as if they were playing a junior varsity team.

The Titans had a harder time maintaining their perfect record, going into halftime down 14-3 to the Jaguars. But in the second half, the Titans showed why they’re the class of the conference, taking the lead in the third quarter and outscoring Jacksonville 21-0 in the final 30 minutes.

Now it gets interesting, particularly for the Titans. Despite being 10-0, they haven’t been the featured game very often. But now the entire nation will be watching when they welcome the suddenly hot New York Jets on Sunday.

When the NFL released the 2008 schedule and we all started circling games that we didn’t want to miss, Titans-Jets on Nov. 23 did not make any of the Top 10 lists — or Top 20 lists, for that matter.

And when the season began and Brett Favre got off to a slow start in New York, and Vince Young got injured, benched and replaced by the aging Kerry Collins in Tennessee, it seemed an even more unlikely must-see game.

Video   Soundoff: Worst team in NFL? Nov. 16: Tiki Barber and Jerome Bettis debate which NFL team is the absolute worst: Detroit or St. Louis. NBC Sports

This is why we never get tired of watching sports — the utter unpredictability of it. Teams that are supposed to be great struggle to get above .500, and teams that were supposed to struggle become world beaters.

When the season began, the Jets and Titans were in that big clot of teams that had big questions marks. Now they’re headed for a showdown that could be the regular-season Game of the Year. And if it’s anything near as good as Thursday night’s Jets-Patriots overtime game, it will be deserving of the title.

The Giants have a different challenge ahead.

Four of their final six games are on the road, and they begin that stretch in Arizona. That this would be a yardstick game seemed as likely when the year began as that Titans-Jets matchup. But the perennial bottom-feeding Cards have been one of the biggest surprise teams of this season. After dispatching the woeful Seahawks, 26-20, they’re 7-3 and hold a four-game lead in the NFC West. There’s no question Arizona will win the division.

The question now is just how good are they? And there’s no better way to answer that than to take on the Giants.

Another big moving day game features the NFC South-leading Panthers against the Falcons. The Panthers had to fight hard to beat the Lions on Sunday, while the Falcons stumbled against the Broncos. Carolina holds a one-game lead over Tampa and a two-game lead over the Falcons. If Carolina can win, it will be 9-2 and close to wrapping up a playoff slot. But the Falcons will be in desperation mode in a division that’s just as tight as the NFC East. To maintain their playoff hopes, they have to win.

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