SANTA CLARA, Calif. — As Dre Greenlaw began to break down his forlorn 2025 season, the veteran linebacker appeared distressed. Sitting in a small room on the east side of Levi’s Stadium, Greenlaw grimaced while discussing his short, unhappy stint with the Denver Broncos, who cut him last March on the one-year anniversary of his celebrated signing in free agency.Typically, being part of an elite defense that plays in a conference championship game at home does not provoke misery. Greenlaw, however, never experienced anything close to a Rocky Mountain high.“There were some dark moments,” Greenlaw said. “It’s tough, because I never got a chance to give them all I had. There’s so much anger, frustration, and you just want to go out there and prove (your worth) to everybody, but you can’t. There were times when it was like, ‘Man, I don’t want to show my face in this building.’ Tough year.”Greenlaw paused to compose himself. He was shivering, having just emerged from an ice bath following a workout on the first day of training camp with the San Francisco 49ers, his former and current team.“So sorry,” he said. “I’m cold as hell.”Though Greenlaw never warmed up during the ensuing 30-minute interview, he exuded comfort on a grander scale. If Season 1 of the HBO series “True Detective” attempted to convince us that time is a flat circle, Greenlaw’s return to the Golden State makes the case that reversing course can smooth over the bumpiest of journeys.“I tell you, it’s different being here in California,” Greenlaw said. “This fresh air, bro, it makes a difference. You feel like you can run all day out here.”Early standouts from 49ers training campVic Tafur and Matt BarrowsA fifth-round draft pick of the 49ers in 2019, Greenlaw developed into an unlikely and under-the-radar star, joining perennial All-Pro Fred Warner to form the league’s most fearsome linebacker tandem.In February 2024, while appearing in his second Super Bowl with the Niners — and, for a quarter-and-a-half, performing like one of the best football players on the planet — Greenlaw tore his Achilles tendon while running onto the field after a punt, setting off a vexing spate of injuries that accompanied him to the Mile High City.After last season — largely because he felt he never had a chance to show his true self — Greenlaw wanted out. The chance to come back to the 49ers was a godsend.“It just feels like home,” said Greenlaw, who signed a one-year, $7.5 million contract at the start of free agency in March. “I get to still play football and prove people wrong. And that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.”Greenlaw, who spent part of his childhood in foster care, has never been afforded the luxury of doing things the easy way. That pattern continued in Denver, where he suffered a severe quadriceps strain on the second day of OTAs and spiraled into an unnerving cycle that included nagging injuries, weight gain, trouble adjusting to a new scheme and practice approach, a suspension for verbally threatening an official, and lost playing time.Oh, and one other thing: “F—ing altitude,” he said. “My mouth’s dry, my nose is dry, I can’t sleep. … I’m fighting demons left and right.”Certainly, there were times he regretted his decision to sign with the Broncos. At other moments he questioned whether he wanted to keep playing, period.“Your mind can get the best of you,” said Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, Greenlaw’s close friend and former 49ers teammate. “Mentally, he was going through a lot. Denver’s a great team, but when you’re used to doing things the same way for so long, it’s tough to break that. It was awkward the whole year. Watching him out there, it almost didn’t look right.”Dre Greenlaw lost playing time after several injuries in Denver, where he also struggled with the altitude. (Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)It almost didn’t happen. After a disappointing 2024 season, Niners owner Jed York initiated an organizational reset designed to reduce cash spending in the short term, meaning free agents like Greenlaw were almost certain to sign elsewhere.Already armed with a potent, playmaking defense, Broncos coach Sean Payton was intent on landing Greenlaw, whose instincts, explosiveness and physicality seemed to make him a good fit. Greenlaw agreed to a three-year, $35 million deal with the Broncos during the two-day “legal tampering” period, a decision reported by multiple outlets.However, mindful that such agreements are non-binding, 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan — who had frequently told assistants that Greenlaw was his “favorite player” — joined general manager John Lynch in a last-ditch effort to change the linebacker’s mind. After increasing the 49ers’ offer, Shanahan and Lynch flew to Texas and showed up at Greenlaw’s offseason home to make a final in-person pitch.That made things harder, but Greenlaw stuck with his decision. He didn’t want to go back on his word, especially after the impending move had become public. He was also dubious about his standing with the Niners, given that he’d only played part of two games in 2024 — performing brilliantly in a December defeat to the Los Angeles Rams — before suffering knee and calf injuries. Despite the late push, Shanahan and Lynch’s initial willingness to let him leave still resonated.“It was a trust thing,” Greenlaw said. “I tend to get with people that I can trust. So I felt a little bit in the gray area with everything, because it was like, ‘Damn, what if I go and get hurt? Am I gonna get cut?’ I thought maybe in Denver, I’ve got a little bit more string if something happens. In (San Francisco), if you get paid — and they (initially) didn’t want to give it to you — it stands out (if you get hurt).”Payton was thrilled that Greenlaw kept his word, but the good vibes soon faded. A Bill Parcells disciple, Payton favors hard practices and can become frustrated when players have prolonged absences. Once Greenlaw hurt his quad in April, a nagging injury that would keep him out until Week 7, he felt his coach’s frustration.“We were good, especially when I first came in,” Greenlaw said. “And then you pop your quad, people start looking at you. Then, when we played the Jaguars (on Dec. 21), I had a little bit of a hamstring (injury). After that, you kind of feel when the coach is, like, not really messing with you. I felt alone.”He communicated frequently with former teammates Al-Shaair, who was having a breakout season with the Texans, and Warner, who suffered a gruesome, season-ending ankle injury in October. Yet Greenlaw failed to establish similar bonds in the Broncos’ locker room.“I never felt like I was a part of the team because I wasn’t (out) there,” Greenlaw said. “I was always in the training room. I knew the trainers more than I knew the teammates.”Admittedly, Greenlaw didn’t know the ins and outs of defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s scheme, which often deploys five defenders on the line of scrimmage (in contrast to the Niners’ four-man fronts), adding to his sense of discomfort. A player who is at his best when freed up to fly to the ball, Greenlaw — who finished the season with an interception, a forced fumble, two passes defended and 43 tackles in eight games — said he felt “stuck in the box” and often found himself in no man’s land.In addition, because of limitations caused by his injuries, “I was six to eight pounds heavier than I normally am,” he said. “I was damn near eating nothing out there, and it still felt like I was heavy.”The one-game suspension, for conduct as he was leaving the field following his first game with Denver (an Oct. 19 victory over the New York Giants), added to his psychic burden. (The Broncos stood behind Greenlaw and supported his unsuccessful appeal to the NFL.) Eventually, his playing time began to dwindle. Greenlaw missed the rest of the regular season after hurting his hamstring in that loss to the Jags and rotated with inside linebacker Justin Strnad in the Broncos’ two playoff games.Soon after the Broncos’ AFC Championship Game defeat to the New England Patriots, Greenlaw cleaned out his locker at the team’s training facility, with no intent of returning. His bosses, he said, “knew as soon as I left that building, I wasn’t coming back.”Looking back, Greenlaw, 29, accepts full responsibility for the failed union. Driven to prove he was worthy of the deal Denver gave him, he tried to do too much, too soon, and never recovered.“I don’t blame anything on the Broncos,” he said. “Coming off the Achilles and the calf (injuries), I just wasn’t in the shape that I needed to be to go out there with them and give it all I got. I should have taken it slow. (But) naturally, they’d just paid me, so that’s all I wanted to do — go show them what I could do. And it bit me in the ass, the second day I got there.”Similarly, Greenlaw owns his failure to master Joseph’s scheme.“I know what I could have done better, as far as being in that film,” he said. “That’s where I feel like I let myself and everybody down.”Al-Shaair admires Greenlaw’s accountability but believes his friend will shine in more familiar surroundings.“Dre, he grew up different, and I always felt like he thrived in San Francisco because he had the right group of people who he trusted,” Al-Shaair said. “When you’re used to doing things the same way for so long, and you’ve been exposed to that gold standard, it’s tough to break that — even if you go to a building where people are good at what they do.“Now, Dre Greenlaw is wearing the colors that he’s supposed to be wearing.”So far, Greenlaw has been welcomed back with a sustained and vigorous scarlet-and-gold bear hug.“We got our bully back,” cornerback Deommodore Lenoir excitedly told reporters last week, an homage to a player who famously got kicked out of a 2023 game for jabbing Philadelphia Eagles security icon Big Dom and who, in the Bay Area, has earned affectionate comparisons to the Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green.Now Greenlaw, who said he regularly watched 49ers games on his phone and other devices last season, is once again driven to capture the franchise’s sixth Lombardi Trophy, and first in 32 years.In a sense, he feels as if he has already won.“Oh, bro, it’s a happy ending now,” Greenlaw said, still shivering but managing a wide smile. “There’s nowhere else that I would want to be.”