As the days tick down until fans flood Empower Field again for Sunday’s home opener, the status of one of Denver’s free-agent stars remains in doubt.
Inside linebacker Dre Greenlaw didn’t practice on Wednesday, another bullet point in a concerning list of preseason developments. After signing a three-year, $31.5 million deal with the Broncos this offseason to be a ceiling-raiser in the middle of Denver’s defense, Greenlaw’s spent much of the preseason watching them elevate from the sidelines.
Fresh off finishing up rehab for a torn ACL that wiped out most of his 2024 season, Greenlaw tore his quad this summer. It flared up again in July. He’s missed wide swaths of camp and didn’t play any preseason snaps.
“We’re being smart,” head coach Sean Payton said Monday. “We’re being conservative, relative to the approach. Itap a long season. So, most importantly, having him not only healthy early on, but for the long haul — is the goal.”
That has taken a certain amount of buy-in and trust from Greenlaw, whom Payton said in mid-August was “chomping at the bit” to play.
“To be real honest, Dre’s always going to want to go as hard and fast as he can go — that’s Dre’s mentality, and a little bit of it, too, is he’s just missed the game so much,” Greenlaw’s agent J.R. Carroll told The Post on Wednesday. “And so, there was a lot of, I think, holding back by the Broncos to try to keep him reined in so that he didn’t reinjure himself.
“I think they did an excellent job of managing his expectations.”
Greenlaw’s Wednesday DNP, though, makes his immediate future more complicated. Payton emphatically declined to comment on Greenlaw beyond the team’s league-mandated injury reports.
If the linebacker does play in Week 1, it’s highly likely Greenlaw sees limited snaps, given the Broncos’ emphasis on his long-term health.
“We gotta be smart and look at pitch counts and be ready to play some younger players and not just say, ‘Hey, Week 1, we’re throwing ‘em out there for 70 plays,'” Payton said last week of Greenlaw and fellow veteran Alex Singleton.
And even with Greenlaw’s obvious desire to return to the field, his camp’s had no issue with Denver’s conservative approach.
“Quite honestly, if it was a different organization, I may try to interject myself if I didn’t think that — or an organization has the reputation for not having the player’s best interest at heart, but have the organization’s best interest held first,” Carroll said. “But with the Broncos, they have done nothing but try to do what’s in the best interest of Dre.
“And until they give me some indication that they’re going to do anything differently, I’m just kind of staying out of the kitchen.”
Denver’s defense, for one, has been able to feel Greenlaw even if the world hasn’t. The inside linebacker is “always itching to hit somebody,” edge rusher Nik Bonitto told reporters in mid-August.
“When he’s been out here, bro, he’s probably the most visible guy on the field,” Bonitto said then.
How visible Greenlaw will be in Week 1, though, remains unclear.
