At any given moment, on the grass during an individual drill or in the dark of the film room, Dre Greenlaw will start playing linebacker trivia.
He’ll quiz second-year linebacker Levelle Bailey on a concept, off the top of his head. Rapid-fire. See what Bailey’s thinking. He’ll tell Bailey to get his pad level down, as the Fresno State product told The Denver Post on Tuesday. Or ask Bailey how he plans to take on a center and a guard who’ll double-team him.
“He’s always just been in my ear,” Bailey said Tuesday.
For months, Greenlaw has darted in and out of the public’s eye in a lost regular season. First came the quad. Then came a suspension. Then came a hamstring. The 28-year-old veteran linebacker’s body has let him down ever since putting pen to paper in March, and he ended 2025 with 43 total tackles in eight games, missing two final wins over the Chiefs and the Chargers with that hamstring injury as the Broncos clinched the No. 1 seed. Still, Greenlaw’s been in constant communication with backup Justin Strnad in games he’s missed, and Bailey raves about his veteran presence behind closed doors.
The contract was signed. The money was paid. 2025 is washed away. The calendar flipped.
This Saturday is the game Denver needs Greenlaw for, more than any other.
“I feel like — it’s on a positive scale more than a negative scale,” Bailey said, speaking on Greenlaw’s overall addition in March. “I know he’s been having an up-and-down year. But he’s gonna brush that off, for sure.
“You can tell, having him back in meetings and things like that. You can just tell the difference, and the uprising our room has got since he’s been there.”
Three months into the linebacker’s time in Denver, Broncos head coach Sean Payton said the 230-pound Greenlaw “plays like Mike Tyson.” And Denver has that force back at the right time, as Payton confirmed Greenlaw is healthy for the Broncos’ AFC divisional matchup against the Bills.
Buffalo has fielded one of the NFL’s best ground attacks for years under offensive coordinator Joe Brady, and ranked first in the NFL in rushing yardage in 2025 behind star running back James Cook and nail-tough quarterback Josh Allen. The Bills drove the Broncos out of the playoffs last season on the back of 210 rushing yards in the AFC wild-card game, a loss that left Payton and Denver’s front office in self-reflection mode.
“There were a lot of things we felt coming away from a game like that that, ‘Hey – we’re not there yet, but we need to improve,'” Payton recalled.
Enter Greenlaw and safety Talanoa Hufanga on free-agent deals, known as two of the most physical athletes at their respective positions in the NFL. Hufanga shrugged off any idea Tuesday that the Broncos signed him specifically for games like this — but noted that he wanted to face Buffalo “just because it was a team” that Denver lost to in last year’s playoffs.
“It definitely holds a chip on your shoulder,” Hufanga said. “And I’m definitely holding a chip, even though I wasn’t here.”
Hufanga was named a second-team All-Pro this past weekend after playing a full 17-game slate in 2025, finishing with 106 tackles and several solo run-stops flying off the edge. Greenlaw hasn’t seen the same luck, a one-time heartbeat of a Super Bowl defense with Hufanga in San Francisco.
But Denver’s locker room knows Buffalo will run the ball. And it knows it’ll need Hufanga and Greenlaw flying sideline-to-sideline in full menacing capacity.
“Those are just two dogs that, they love the game of football,” outside linebacker Nik Bonitto told The Post. “And they love to hit people. And obviously, in a game like this, we’re gonna need that. So, it’s been great having ‘em all year. And I know both of them, those are the type of games they live for.”
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But this is what Denver has aimed for all along, through a notably conservative approach to managing Greenlaw’s early-season quad injury: he is back roaming come the playoffs. Tyson didn’t always deliver a knockout in the first round, after all.
“He’s a fighter,” Bailey said of Greenlaw. “And he’s gonna do whatever he can do to get back on that field, whenever the opportunity is.”
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