In an answer we didn’t include last week in his Q&A session with DenverBroncos.com, Linebackers Coach Richard Smith talked about his impressions of the linebackers he’s preparing to work with this season.

One key point that stood out was the fact that he put Mario Haggan into the same group as Elvis Dumervil and Robert Ayers, players Head Coach John Fox has already said he envisions as 4-3 defensive ends.

“You’d say why?” Smith said. “What it does is it upgrades the speed of our defense. Now you’re taking linebackers and they’re playing down linemen — it upgrades the athleticism of that position.”

I asked Smith to talk a little more about the role Haggan will most likely play in 2011 after rotating from outside linebacker to inside linebacker and back again in 2010.