Broncos linebacker Dre Greenlaw has had a difficult journey to NFL stardom, and that made it personal to him when he hit free agency in March and had the opportunity to decide for himself where he’d play.
Greenlaw spent much of his childhood in shelters, group homes and the foster system before his high school coach took him in and eventually adopted him. A close relationship with his coach is meaningful to Greenlaw, and Greenlaw said he knew early on in free agency that he could have a close relationship with Broncos head coach Sean Payton.
“They wanted me, you know what I mean?” Greenlaw said. “Throughout the whole time I was talking to Sean, there was never no ifs, ands, buts, maybe this or that. It was like, ‘Man, we want you to be here.’ And I was a foster kid growing up, so there’s not a lot of times that people just wanted me. You know what I’m saying? So it just made me feel special. It made me feel like this is the place where I needed to be.”
Payton has been talking up Greenlaw in training camp, and Greenlaw says the mutual respect he has with Payton as well as the Penner family that owns the team makes him feel at home in Denver.
“The people that’s in the organization, Sean, the Penners, and then the guys . . . I just wanted to be a part of that,” Greenlaw said. “I wanted to be where I was accepted, where I was wanted it. And this was the right place for me.”