It’s a two-team race in the watered-down NFC this season, with Drew Brees leading the surprisingly undefeated Saints and Brett Favre leading the not-so-surprising Vikings.

Forget the Vikings, though. Who isn’t excited about the high-powered Saints, who conjure memories of the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf from the late 1990s and early 2000s?

Meanwhile, Tony Romo and Dallas are heating up and poised to take control of the East, but they need to keep it up after November if they are going to give the Saints and Vikings a run.

Kurt Warner and Arizona appear set to repeat as champs in the still-stinky West. Is there a rule that only one team from this division can be good at one time?

Atlanta and Philadelphia look like the best of the rest, even though they are pretty inconsistent themselves.

Here’s a look at how each team fared in the first half.

NFC SOUTH

New Orleans Saints (8-0): Brees has been awesome ever since he set foot in New Orleans three years ago. He might have won the MVP award last season if the Saints had done better than 8-8. Well, the Saints already have eight wins this season, and we predict Brees will either win the MVP outright or share it with one of the three-time owners, Peyton Manning or Favre. Of course, Brees has some help this year: a running game that ranks fifth in the league and a vastly improved defense thanks to new coordinator Gregg Williams and 34-year-old safety Darren Sharper, who is a strong candidate for NFL defensive player of the year with seven interceptions and three returned for touchdowns. The Saints might be a team of destiny this year, and that would be very cool to see. Grade: A

Atlanta Falcons (5-3): The Falcons are good enough to beat the average teams but not good enough to beat the good teams on the road. They have lost at New England, Dallas and New Orleans. After a standout rookie season, Matt Ryan was expected to step it up even more in his second year. But he has been pretty average. So was Michael Turner until the past couple of weeks. But the offense is only going to get better. The defense, on the other hand, is one of the worst in the league, and that will be the reason the Falcons don’t win a playoff game this season. Grade: B-

Carolina Panthers (3-5): The Panthers have rebounded a bit from an 0-3 start in which Jake Delhomme was simply awful. They finally seem to have figured out that their best offense is the one that relies on running backs DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart. With that in mind, Williams has been on fire the past four weeks (548 yards, five touchdons). The Panthers are still very inconsistent, though. Their best win was in Arizona, but they also barely beat Washington and Tampa, and they lost at home to Buffalo. With a tough remaining schedule, especially in the final month, the Panthers aren’t going anywhere this season. But Delhomme and coach John Fox probably are. Time for Bill Cowher? Grade: C-

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-7): It’s hard to argue with people who think the Glazers just don’t care about their NFL team anymore. First they hire a 32-year-old (Raheem Morris) with no coordinating experience to be their coach, then they spend very little money to improve their team. Then they watch as the young coach fires his offensive coordinator before the season begins and goes through three quarterbacks. This franchise seems to have no plan, but if they want to win again they will admit the Morris error and hire someone who will create a plan. Grade: F

NFC NORTH

Minnesota Vikings (7-1): Well, it has worked out just as the Vikings hoped. Favre has come in and been the missing ingredient for a team that seemed a quarterback shy of becoming a Super Bowl contender. At age 40, Favre is the second-rated passer in the NFL (behind Brees). Of course, the offense really is led by Adrian Peterson, who carries the ball like he’s a defender looking to blow someone up. It is amazing he has walked away from some of the collisions he has caused while running downfield. The Vikings’ only loss was to the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers, and Favre has pulled them out of a couple of jams (San Francisco and Baltimore), plus led them to a sweep of the Packers in his personal revenge tour. The Vikings seem certain to be in the hunt almost until the end. And once they’re out, the Favre watch will begin anew in 2010. Grade: A-

Green Bay Packers (4-4): Other than holding the ball too long, Aaron Rodgers has played great this season. But he has taken 37 sacks (the NFL record is 76 by David Carr in 2002) and won’t last at that rate. One thing we’ve learned about the Packers: Never bet on them. They have blown at least two Vegas parlays for me in the past, and they are responsible for knocking 27 people out of our Survivor pool this year. That loss to Tampa Bay knocked a bunch of people out last week, and it will end up knocking the Packers out of the playoffs, too. Are GM Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy in trouble? Grade: C-

Chicago Bears (4-5): We could have told you Jay Cutler wasn’t going to make a difference for the Bears. And he has simply gotten worse as the season has progressed. In play and attitude. Five picks Thursday night (giving him 12 in his last five games), followed by a $20,000 fine for throwing a tantrum against referee Ed Hochuli last weekend. Cutler will never be a leader, and the Bears will learn they paid far too high a price for a talented but immature QB. And Lovie Smith also will pay for his loyalty to offensive coordinator Ron Turner, whose staid offense helped Dave Wannstedt get fired and might do the same for Smith. Grade: C-

Detroit Lions (1-7): Under Jim Schwartz, the Lions finally ended that losing streak, which had stretched to 19 games. But that win against Washington is the only one they have had in the last 25 contests (only the second in their past 32 games). Schwartz has a young offense and an understaffed defense that isn’t any better. This project will take a while, and it will be accomplished only if Matthew Stafford develops and if the front-office duo of Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand demonstrate they know what they’re doing. Grade: D

NFC WEST

Arizona Cardinals (5-3): The defending NFC champions are all backwards. Inexplicably, the Cardinals have dominated on the road (4-0), with double-digit wins at Jacksonville, Seattle and Chicago. But they have lost at home to San Francisco, Indianapolis and Carolina. They’ve got four of each left and should easily be able to achieve 10 wins – plenty to win the West again. And then Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald need to get hot again like they did in last season’s playoffs. Grade: B-.

San Francisco 49ers (4-5): Mike Singletary got the Niners off to a hot start, the only loss in the first four games coming on a last-second TD pass from Favre in Minnesota. But since a 3-1 start, the 49ers had lost four straight until winning ugly against Chicago on Thursday. Any time a team switches quarterbacks in the middle of the season, as the 49ers did in Week 7, the odds are not very good that team will make the playoffs. With Alex Smith and Shaun Hill as its quarterbacks, the best this team can probably do is .500. Grade: C-

Seattle Seahawks (3-5): This team has had no continuity on offense, and that has doomed it to a near repeat of 2008. It’s an unlucky start for Jim Mora in his first season as coach. The defense has shown flashes, but the offense has at times been far too inept. Even with Matt Hasselbeck out, the Seahawks should have beaten Chicago in Week 3. The offense must put it together against Arizona this weekend, or the Hawks will be finished this season. Grade C-

St. Louis Rams (1-7): Other than Steven Jackson and a few young defenders, the cupboard was pretty bare for Steve Spagnuolo when he took over this year. The Rams started 0-7 and finally got a win when they face equally horrible Detroit in Week 8. The Rams have so many problem areas, it’s hard to see them winning more than one more game this season, and it’s just as hard to see them being much better in the next two or three years. Grade: F

NFC EAST

Dallas Cowboys (6-2): The Cowboys took a lot of flak for a 3-2 start that included a home loss to the Giants and a lucky escape from Kansas City in overtime. Tony Romo was pretty inconsistent early in the season, but he has been his old playmaking self over the past four games, thanks to the emergence of fourth-year receiver Miles Austin. The Cowboys won a key game last Sunday against Philadelphia to take the lead in the East for now, and if they keep playing the way are, they will keep the lead. Then we’ll see if they can ditch the December doldrums and challenge the Saints and Vikings in the postseason. Grade: B

Philadelphia Eagles (5-3): With the exception of a completely unforgivable loss in Oakland, the Eagles have pounded the bad teams (Carolina, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Washington), but they are just 1-2 against teams with winning records. That makes the Eagles good enough to make the playoffs but not good enough to win once they get there. Donovan McNabb has been playing with broken ribs that knocked him out of Week 2 and Week 3, the sixth time in eight years he has missed games. DeSean Jackson has been the league’s big-play star, with six scoring plays from 50 yards or farther. And the addition of LB Will Witherspoon in Week 7 was an excellent move. If the offense becomes consistent, the Eagles could make a run in the playoffs. If not, they will struggle just to make it. Grade: C+

New York Giants (5-4): A 5-0 start had everyone thinking erroneously that the Giants were one of the NFL’s elite again. But four straight losses have revealed the Giants for what they really are: an average team. Four of the wins came against horrible teams, and the four losses have come against playoff contenders. That’s the definition of average. Their young receivers have filled the void left by the departures of Plaxico Burress and Amani Toomer, but the running game has been inconsistent, Eli Manning has struggled against good teams and the defense has been racked by injuries and not able to hold off good offenses. With five of the last seven against teams with winning records, it doesn’t look like the Giants are going anywhere this season.  Grade: C

Washington Redskins (2-6): There are a few poorly run teams in the league (Detroit, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Buffalo), but the Redskins are giving the Raiders a run for the most dysfunctional club. Jim Zorn is the lamest duck in the NFL since Lame, er Lane, Kiffin in Oakland last season. And Daniel Snyder might be even more senile than Al Davis for (A) hiring the inexperienced Zorn in the first place and (B) bringing in Sherm Lewis out of retirement to replace Zorn calling plays for a team he knew nothing about. Zorn should never have suffered that indignity, but he stayed to get paid and he’ll be able to take his money and run when he’s fired at the end of the season. You have to feel sorry for Redskins fans who have had to put up with Snyder’s moronic management of this team for 10 years. They have to hope he finally figured out he doesn’t know what he’s doing and that perhaps he should replace the equally clueless Vinny Cerrato with someone who knows something about football. Grade: F