Thursday & Long: Organizations Under New Management

The Redskins are making Albert Haynesworth a 3-4 defensive end? The last quarterback standing in Cleveland will be...none of them? And did the Seahawks really think about trading the No. 6 pick in the draft for a talented but potentially team-wrecking wide receiver? Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, but it shouldn't be too big a surprise. The one thing all three of these teams have in common is new leadership -- new faces in coaching and/or management positions. And when that happens in the NFL, all bets are off.

Washington has a new GM and coach, and so far it appears all that talk about owner Dan Snyder being hands-off seems to have been legit. The Browns have a new team president and GM, and they seem determined to try and field a contender as soon as next year. Pete Carroll has taken over as coach in Seattle, and he's poking around at different ways to remake the offense for the present and the future. This week's Thursday-and-Long takes a look at the ways the men now running these three organizations are handling the rosters they inherited, and we start in the nation's capital, where they don't appear to be scared of moving the biggest, baddest dude they have.

The chatter around the scouting combine was that Mike Shanahan plans to install a base 3-4 defense in Washington next year, and the thought at the time was that Shanahan would have to talk Haynesworth into playing nose tackle in such a formation. But this week, the Redskins signed the massive Maake Kemoeatu, the former Panthers NT who missed this past season with a torn Achilles' tendon. Once Kemoeatu comes back, however soon that is, he'll be the man in the middle of that 3-4 line and will move Haynesworth, last year's big, $100 million free-agent signing, to one of the ends.

The way they're spinning this in Washington is that such a move would allow Haynesworth more freedom to rush the passer, which he'd prefer. But Haynesworth surely knows that 3-4 defensive ends are more space-eaters and block-absorbers than they are pass-rushers, and that much of his assignment at the end will be to enable an outside linebacker such as Brian Orakpo to pursue passers. The bet here is that Big Albert, who chafed at his 2009 role under then-coach Jim Zorn, doesn't like this new move, and makes life difficult for the coaches because of it.

But Shanahan and new GM Bruce Allen likely don't care. Just because the prior administration gave Haynesworth all that money doesn't mean they're going to build and work around him. They're going to run the team the way they want to run it, and adjust the personnel to fit their plan. You can quibble with the wisdom of such a decision (personally, I think it's a huge mistake), but it's a sterling example of what we're talking about here -- new people taking over a team and not feeling as if they have to continue the plans of the people who came before them. Albert Haynesworth is a great player, but he's apparently going to have to be one under different conditions than the ones under which he signed. Whether he likes it or not.

Lots of things are different in Washington, of course. Free agency began with the Redskins sitting by while Julius Peppers went to Chicago, Karlos Dansby to Miami and Thomas Jones to Kansas City. The Redskins liked all of those players, but not for the money they got in those other places, so they were content to let them go and try to fill their holes in the secondary free-agent market. You can quibble with that decision, too, but at least it's new. And it's not as if the old way was working in Washington.

The same can be said in Cleveland, where Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert appear to have taken a look at the quarterbacks on the roster and decided they like none of them. This isn't any kind of revolutionary opinion. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that these guys watched a couple of Browns games in 2009. But Derek Anderson is already gone, Brady Quinn is on the block, Seneca Wallace is in the house as the backup and Jake Delhomme was visiting Thursday, presumably to audition for the starter's role.

People at the combine who were familiar with Cleveland's plans said they don't expect the Browns to take a quarterback with their No. 7 overall pick in the draft. Their defensive needs are too great and they're took likely to be able to grab a stud defensive back at that spot. But the expectation around the league is that there will be a new face at quarterback in Cleveland in 2010, whether that's a jettisoned vet like Delhomme or somebody they acquire via trade. Heckert, the new Cleveland GM, came from Philadelphia, so it's natural to imagine him being interested in one of the Eagles' available QBs, be it Donovan McNabb, Kevin Kolb or Michael Vick.

Regardless, it seems clear that the new Browns management isn't married to Quinn just because he was a first-round pick of a previous administration. And holdover coach Eric Mangini never seemed too impressed with any of his QB options last year, so he's certainly on board with the plan for a change. The Browns have been somewhat aggressive in the early free-agent going, signing LB Scott Fujita away from the Super Bowl champion Saints for $8 million and signing 49ers offensive lineman Tony Pashos. People around the league expect Holmgren to continue to be active, as he'd like the rebuilding time in Cleveland to be short.

It's hard to know for sure what's going on in Seattle, where Jim Mora's firing and Pete Carroll's hiring were the surprise of the early off-season, but a couple of things have become clear. The Seahawks' flirtation with Brandon Marshall indicates that they know they need help in the passing game. (Though at this point, wisely, they do not appear inclined to deal the No. 6 overall pick in the draft for Marshall, whose market and price are likely to drop as the off-season moves along.) But it's also clear, from talking to people familiar with the team's plans, that the new Seattle coaching staff likes Matt Hasselbeck a lot and is prepared to go through the 2009 season with him as their quarterback.

That doesn't mean Seattle isn't on the hunt for a quarterback, just that they don't feel the need to get somebody who can start right away. They like the Eagles' QBs as well, but the guy they like best is Kolb, the young backup who threw for more than 300 yards in each of his substitute starts in 2009 and who could sit behind Hasselbeck (or play when Hasselbeck inevitably gets hurt) and continue to learn and develop, then be ready to take over the team in 2011 or 2012.

Seattle has two picks in the top 15, and they could use one of them on Sam Bradford or Jimmy Clausen if one of those guys is there at 6 or 14. But they're more likely to find Walter Jones' replacement at left tackle with that first pick, and they have other needs they could address at 14. So they continue to nose around for backup/future QB help (they're bringing in Derek Anderson for a visit, for example) while sitting tight for now with the guy they have. Of all the NFL's under-new-management teams, the new men running the Seahawks seem to like the roster they inherited the best.