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Send your NFL questions (along with your name and location) to NFLFanHouse@gmail.com. Each Thursday, we'll answer the best -- or, if nothing else, most entertaining -- in our NFL Mailbag.

Excluding Brett Favre, which remaining free agent can play the biggest role in 2009?

The easy answer (INCLUDING Brett Favre!!) is Plaxico Burress. He's a high-ceiling, high-impact wide receiver. You saw the way the Giants' offense missed him at the end of 2008, and we've seen a handful of teams express interest in him -- even though nobody knows if he's going to play in 2009. If he is allowed to play, he's your answer. But it looks increasingly likely that he'll be suspended for at least part of the season, if not all. So in the non-Burress division, I have three veterans who could make an interesting impact in the right situation:

ESPN's Pat Yasikinas has a solid story today about Falcons linebacker Stephen Nicholas and his infant son's heart transplant. It's a great story for Father's Day and well worth the read.

But beyond Nicholas and his wife Irene's emotional journey of dealing with a sick child that thankfully has a happy ending now that Stephen Jr. is doing well, something else jumped out from Yasikinas' story: the Falcons as an organization got it right.

It's easy to make jokes about the Falcons' history of ineptitude on the field, but what struck me is that the team got every detail right off the field with Nicholas.

There are some very legitimate questions about how good the Falcons' defense will be. Atlanta will be relying on a largely new set of linebackers, a much younger set of safeties and a still-potentially thin defensive line.

But offensively, is there a Falcons fan who doesn't think the Falcons will be even better than they were last year? They replaced the league's worst set of tight ends (combined 19 catches for 211 yards) with Tony Gonzalez (96 catches for 1,058 yards). The running game of Michael Turner and Jerious Norwood is back, the wide receivers should be even better as Harry Douglas enters his second year, and the offensive line returns intact.

Two weeks ago, Jeremy Shockey was rolled out of the Hard Rock Casino's "Rehab" pool party on a stretcher suffering from "dehydration," which is basically a sanitized hospital euphemism for "ridiculously wasted." This weekend, Shockey returned to Saints practice and addressed the issue.

"You know what they say, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," Shockey told reporters at the Saints training facility. "That's the past. I'm looking forward to the future."

Predictably, the New Orleans news media fell all over themselves to pat Shockey on the back for his outlandish wit. Did you see what he did there? He took an advertising slogan and made it his own! That is totally awesome.

Or not. At all.

Social networking is proving to be quite dangerous to professional athletes. We've heard about teams surreptitiously spying on potential draftees, and we've seen players forced to defend different groups they joined because of the questions it raises about their character. With the arrest of Falcons offensive tackle Quinn Ojinnaka, though, we're moving into new territory.

As you may recall, five NFL players were slapped with respective four-game suspensions late last season -- though they never served them while their legal claims were being heard in court. Friday, a federal judge dismissed the claims of the players -- Kevin Williams and Pat Williams of the Vikings, Charles Grant and Will Smith of the Saints, and unsigned Deuce McAllister.

Those five players -- well, four if McAllister doesn't sign somewhere -- will be forced to sit out the first quarter of the season for their respective teams.

It's been two seasons since Michael Vick walked off the field after a 24-17 season-ending loss to the Eagles. But it's amazing to see how much has changed in Atlanta since then.

Since Vick went to prison, the Falcons have had three head coaches (if you count interim head coach Emmitt Thomas), four starting quarterbacks and a near complete turnover of the starting lineup.

If not for Matt Ryan, Falcons owner Arthur Blank would be facing a nightmare scenario right now.

When Blank reiterated today that the Falcons will be getting rid of Vick as soon as he's reinstated by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, there was nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders. With Ryan firmly established as the team's franchise quarterback, it makes perfect sense that Vick has no place in Atlanta's future plans.

By announcing such a plan, the Falcons will likely not get any team to offer them anything in a trade -- he's made it clear that Atlanta won't be keeping him.

Hopefully for the Falcons, this will all be forgotten in two weeks, but first-round pick Peria Jerry injured his knee during Saturday morning's minicamp practice.

Jerry bumped knees with another player, then left the field under his own power. Trainers were taking a look at his knee and giving him some ice, they should know if it's a problem or, more likely, no big deal by the end of the day.

It's most likely just a bruise, but you have to get nervous anytime a player limps off during minicamp -- already the Patriots have lost one of their draft picks for the season with a torn ACL. If Jerry misses a couple of run-throughs while icing the knee, it's no big deal -- he's still around the team and is already starting to digest the playbook, but the Falcons can't have Jerry out with a significant injury -- he's too important to a very thin group of defensive tackles.

The goofy NFL news of the day Saturday was the renaming of the home of the Miami Dolphins after Jimmy Buffett's beer company. "Land Shark Stadium" will be the fifth different name this building has had since it opened in 1987.

The stadium has an interesting history. Its $115 million construction cost was completely privately funded (imagine that!) with the help of season ticket holders who made long-term commitments in exchange for the promise of a state-of-the-art football facility. Joe Robbie, the owner of the Dolphins at the time, envisioned it as a stadium that could host baseball as well as football, and for that reason, the front-row seats are set back further from the sidelines than at traditional NFL venues.

Next February, Super Bowl XLIV will be the fifth Super Bowl this stadium has hosted -- under four of its five different names: