Kyle Shanahan explains why he flew to Texas to try and convince Dre Greenlaw to spurn Broncos

PALM BEACH, Fla. — There’s a common maxim in the NFL: If you really want a player, you’ll find a way to keep him around — even if you have to massively manipulate the salary cap to do it.

One need only look at the New Orleans Saints and their annual salary-cap adventures as evidence; they’re already nearly $26 million over the projected 2026 salary cap but they nevertheless found a way to hold off other suitors — including the Denver Broncos — to re-sign tight end Juwan Johnson last month.

San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan hated losing linebacker Dre Greenlaw to the Broncos three weeks ago. So much that he and John Lynch hopped on a plane to try to convince Greenlaw to return after a 2024 season that saw him play just 34 snaps due to an Achilles tendon rupture suffered in Super Bowl LVIII.

That begged the question Tuesday morning: Why not just get Greenlaw re-signed earlier?

“Well, we tried to,” Shanahan said at the NFC Coaches Breakfast on Tuesday morning during the NFL Annual Meeting. “There’s negotiating tactics and everything.

“And you’re also — it’s not just one player at a time. You’re working 20 different things at a time. You’re trying to get a backup tackle, you’re trying to get a quarterback. You’re working on linebackers, you’re working on safeties. You’re working on all these positions, and they don’t just go in order like that. You’re negotiating with agents, and these things happen.”

Of course, the 49ers, Shanahan and Lynch had a long window with which to negotiate with Greenlaw — months, really. Deadlines spur action, to be certain — but they didn’t have to let time dwindle.

Because they did, the Broncos pounced when the “legal tampering” period opened.

 

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“Sometimes you see something on Twitter just like you guys saw,” Shanahan said, “and then we’d still like another shot, and we took another shot, and we weren’t able to get it done.”

They were perfectly within their rights, of course. And the Broncos couldn’t do anything about it. The 49ers could sit down with Greenlaw during the “legal-tampering” window, while Denver could only have indirect contact — “agent-to-general manager” contact, as Sean Payton noted during his media availability here Monday.

“It’s their player at that time,” Payton said. “For us, nothing can happen until that Wednesday time frame,” Payton said. “And so, man, I’m glad he chose us.”

So, why did Shanahan and Lynch make a special visit to try and woo Greenlaw back to the Bay Area?

“Because it just worked out that way,” Shanahan said Tuesday morning. “I mean, we would have done that in the past if it came down to it, but when you’re going through the recruiting part, when he’s committed to someone else, we wanted to see Dre face to face, and he happened to live in Texas, so we — it was a little farther. We couldn’t just meet him at our facility.

“So John and I wanted to fly down there and talk to him and give ourself one last chance.”

Of course, Greenlaw declined, and he gives the Broncos a core defender at a position where they were unlikely to find an immediate starter in the draft.

“We found our starting inside ‘backer,” Payton said. “Whether it’s a mike or will, it’s harder to say that about a rookie. It’s just — there’s certain positions that — that’s not to say that a rookie can’t come in and do it, but I think it’s harder to project that.”

Added general manager George Paton: “He’s a tone setter of the defense … You watch him on tape, he sticks out. It’s very contagious when you watch him play the game.”

That’s why Shanahan and Lynch wanted Greenlaw to stay.

Just not enough to give him a contract extension earlier.