New York Giants at St. Louis 10 a.m., Channel 11

FORGIVE, BUT NEVER FORGET

That would be game as in pheasant, as in the Giants, with the Rams firing out of the shotgun. The Giants are 3-1, mainly out of force of habit, and with both running backs injured and Kerry Collins back to playing like Kerry Collins, all the Giants can do is tread into this one talking bravely.

“We’re the [NFC] champs,” Giant linebacker Mike Barrow felt the need to remind everyone this week. “They got to go through us. We got the belt.”

Ahem, about that belt: If Az-Zahir Hakim hadn’t fumbled that fourth-quarter punt in last season’s wild-card game against New Orleans, the Rams’ next stop would have been the Meadowlands, where they had beaten the Giants, 38-24, two months earlier, playing without Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk.

And from there, the Rams would have kept on rolling--over the Giants, through the Vikings, on to Tampa, where Mike Martz, armed with something more than a flinching Collins, would have finally found a way to shut up Shannon Sharpe and Brian Billick, sparing the country Ray Lewis victory dances and six weeks of Tony Siragusa mugging for HBO cameras.

So much to answer for, Az-Zahir.

The line: St. Louis by 101/2.