FanHouse Kenny McKinley

Maybe Brandon Marshall's finally ready to play team-ball in Denver. Or maybe the Broncos have realized exactly how much they need him.

Whatever the case, the disgruntled wide receiver is back with his team -- Sunday, Denver coach Josh McDaniels lifted the suspension imposed on Marshall on August 28 after an outburst at a camp workout.

The Broncos received a one-day exemption from the league, allowing them to keep their roster at 54 briefly. They must get down to the 53-man roster limit by Monday.

Who moved to the head of the NFL class during the draft? Find out with FanHouse's team-by-team 2009 Draft Grades.

"You go into this thing understanding that you're not going to fix everything that you may want to fix."

That's Broncos coach Josh McDaniels speaking, likely about the team's failure to improve their awful run defense. He's speaking the truth. There were too many issues facing Denver for them to solve them all over the course of seven rounds.

McDaniels' wisdom does nothing to explain why the team chose to trade away its 2010 first-round pick so they could draft cornerback Alphonso Smith in the second round, however. That seems more like creating a problem where none existed, something that could easily come back to haunt the Broncos in a year's time.

With the draft less than a week away, it's time to start firming up the draft boards. When the draft begins, the Steelers will have multiple needs, although thankfully there is no position where the Steelers don't bring back a projected starter with some experience.

The Steelers bigger need is to plan ahead for 2010, when free agency could rip apart much of this past year's Super Bowl champs. With that in mind here are four plausible draft classes for the Steelersn as prepared by friend the Steelers draft nut, all of these include no trades. Every player is projected to go in a round where multiple draft experts still have them available on the board. There are a few spots where it is noted that it is less likely that player is still on the board when the Steelers pick in that round, but none of these are absurd stretches. Which of these classes would you prefer and why?

With the draft approaching, we ignore projections and identify the dream scenario for each team in a series we call The Perfect Draft.

The Redskins made the biggest early splash this offseason, luring beastly defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth from Tennessee to anchor their defensive line. Their work, however, is not done. Unfortunately for Washington, it plays in arguably the best division in the NFL. Fortunately, the few holes the Redskins still have on their roster should be perfectly fixable. In fact, many could be done in-house, with younger players developing further.

Even if it seems like Simeon Castille is in his seventh year at Alabama or Jacob Tamme played tight end when Tim Couch was at Kentucky, the truth is that college rosters are almost always in flux. It's the reason pundits make such a big deal about returning starters -- though I've never figured out why returning starters is such a good thing if they all stunk the year before, but I digress -- since the window to play in college is so short, getting guys with experience back is a luxury.

Like Bruce Ciskie and his Big Ten preview, I could have written this whole post about one team: Florida. In fact, I could have just written it about Florida's defense, which had seven players (Jarvis Moss, Reggie Nelson, Ray McDonald, Marcus Thomas, Joe Cohen, Ryan Smith, and Brandon Siler) drafted last April. And of course there are other big losses that nearly every team has to recoup.

But instead, I felt it better to spread the love around and look at the really big shoes that need filling, and the shoes which, if filled properly, could help their teams compete for a SEC championship. It starts with some of the biggest shoes -- both literally and figuratively -- that a quarterback could leave behind...