Path to Game-Winning Interceptions Began Over Decade Ago for Greenlaw

49ers win over Green Bay result of years of experiences that culminated in triumphant moment to set up NFC championship showdown with Detroit

Author:
Kent Smith
Publish date:
Jan 23, 2024 5:07 PM EST

In this story:

Arkansas Razorbacks

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Linebacker Dre Greenlaw leaned back against a blank white wall and looked ahead at the scrum of reporters gathering around him. They wanted to talk about the two interceptions he'd just pulled down inside the enclosed confines of one of the NFL's crown jewel stadiums in one of the most important games of his life.

Yet, he wanted to talk about veteran leadership and pushing one another for improvement. Over and over he mentioned wanting to be the best and getting each other's backs.

"I think the care factor is growing," Greenlaw said. "A lot of guys realize there isn't too much more after this."

Still, it was hard to hide the disappointment in his voice. He had just experienced a moment that didn't seem possible a decade earlier. Those two key interceptions were career markers showing just how much Greenlaw had overcome; how far his journey had taken him.

"Hopefully, [all this effort] will result in a win," Greenlaw said. "Eventually."

And it did. Six years later when history repeated itself.

See, before Greenlaw became the hero of the San Francisco 49ers' epic comeback against the Green Bay Packers in the divisional playoffs last Saturday with a pair of interceptions that swung things in the NFC West champions' favor, he was in a different NFL stadium alongside his Arkansas Razorbacks teammates trying to stop the bleeding against the Aggies.

After dominating Texas A&M from 1977-2011, the Aggies found a new switch upon joining the SEC. They pulled off three overtime wins and, despite Greenlaw's heroics, had just secured consecutive win No. 7.

There wasn't much else he could have done. He finished with 13 tackles and a pair of interceptions. That's a full day's work by any means on the football field. Simply getting on the field that day had been more than most could have done.

At the outset, the basic premise indicates Greenlaw was in for a fairly normal life. He was born into a two-parent home in Conway, in the central part of Arkansas. But that's about as far as the positives go as the painful, winding tale slowly made its way to Fayetteville.

He was born near the end of a line of 12 children who would soon be split up between the parents. Dad reportedly took five and his mother agreed to take care of seven on her own, one of the most problematic being Greenlaw.

He and his siblings moved around a lot, whether it was their home or someone else's as his mother tried to at least provide basic shelter. Meanwhile, Greenlaw says he relied on his darker nature to get by from day to day. It's because of this that one of the family moves wasn't exactly planned.

At one point he got into enough fights that he said he got his family kicked out of an apartment. It was a lot on his struggling mother whom he said eventually turned to alcohol and began to ignore her family responsibilities.

With his mother more or less out of the picture, his demeanor worsened. Soon, he developed a lifestyle that indicated he was destined for a short life, much less a long, successful career in the NFL. Before long, he found himself in jail at only 10-years-old after reportedly stealing a cell phone from his school principal's office.

By the time the state ruled his mother no longer fit to take care of children, shipping Greenlaw off as a ward of the state, he had grown into the troubled child the rest of his family was reportedly fine with no longer seeing. According to Greenlaw, no one else wanted much to do with him either.

What followed was three years of bouncing between foster homes and group homes as he balanced his tough kid image with the loneliness of the nights. The string of tenuous living situations and uncertain food security finally found a moment of stability when he arrived at the Methodist Boys' Home in Fayetteville at age 13, just in time to bury himself in the therapeutic rituals of junior high football.

There, all that pent up anger and frustration slowly released itself on the field, finally making room for something else to infiltrate his heart. At Ramay Junior High, Greenlaw says the team became his family. They filled a need that hadn't been met in a long time.

Along with finding a group of people who both cared for him and relied upon him for help within the football team, he found other ways to begin healing. He started attending church and found the combination of church and family to be quite the starting block toward building a new life.

But then came potential trouble. Greenlaw suffered a groin injury that potentially could take his stability away for a little while and open a door to his past transgressions. However, instead, the God he had been hearing about in church, opened a different door that would change his life forever.

Greenlaw was sent to Fayetteville High School to see the trainer to help him recover. There, by chance, he came across assistant coach Brian Early.

So Coach Early comes in and he's just like 'What are doing here? What's your name? Who do you play?'" Greenlaw told an NBC affiliate in San Francisco. "I ended up you know, just basically telling him I was in a group home and that's how I ended up here in Fayetteville."

For some unknown reason, Early couldn't shake Greenlaw from his mind. There was something about the young man that made him want to follow up and see if he could help out.

"I was really impressed with the way that he carried himself," Early said in the piece. "Just the type of kid that he was. I thought there was something special about him. And you know, I remember calling Nancy [Early's wife] when he left the complex after I had met him and asking her to call the Methodist Boys' Home."

The reports came back positive, so Early slowly eased his way into Greenlaw's life, hoping to serve as a mentor who might be able to guide him on a good path throughout high school and possibly provide the young man with experiences he may not normally have.

He and his wife drove Greenlaw to church, took him out to eat whenever possible and even on a shopping trip to pick out his own clothes for the first time. In another personal first, he got to attend his first ever Razorback game with the family.

Then things took another turn as God threw another key turning point into Greenlaw's life. One day while in ninth grade, Nancy went to drop him off at the group home. There, a worker discreetly told her the home would soon be closed.

She told her husband, leaving the two faced with a difficult decision. Were they in a position to take in Greenlaw or would it be best to let him move on to his next stop?

After all, the couple had two young daughters in the home and everyone they talked to voiced the same concern about bringing in a teenage boy. Still, there was one thing that nagged Early.

"There's some pretty overwhelming statistics there when someone ages out in foster care, just the percentage that they're either going to you know, end up in poverty or end up behind bars," Early said. "The statistics are pretty overwhelming."

In the end, for his wife Nancy, it was all about listening to the will of God. There simply was no choice.

"We probably would have been just find mentoring him and picking him up on Sundays and feeling pretty good about ourselves," Nancy said. "And then. when that foster home closed down, it was a real message just from God that said 'What you're doing is is great. It's not enough. You know, he needs a family. He needs a home.' So we just kind of made that decision."

Greenlaw legally moved into their home two days before the group home closed. It provided him the basic luxuries of eating food when he was hungry, which was an adjustment and provided a situation he didn't want to mess up. He had no intentions of ever returning to that life of a scared child in the traditional foster system.

He also had the advantage of living with a football coach, which allowed him to absorb knowledge that helped him know how to think on the field. It was this, accompanied by time playing in the secondary early in his playing days at Fayetteville High School that made both the interceptions against Texas A&M and the pair against Green Bay possible.

After the loss at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Greenlaw described the reads he made on a pair of receivers. He discussed tendencies he saw on film when the Aggies played Tennessee and he broke down what happened before Kellen Mond's passes ended up in his hands in a fashion similar to a defensive backs coach rather than a linebacker.

Just a few months earlier, Greenlaw broke news of a different type. This time he spoke with full confidence in front of a Razorbacks banner, not the voice of regret he would carry in front of that blank wall later that fall. At SEC media days, in his final season at Arkansas, Greenlaw made public that he had decided to officially become a member of the Early family.

"So, we decided that since I was 21, and I was old enough and mature enough to, you know, decide what I wanted to do, because my family technically, rights were terminated from me, so I decided to make them you know, my official mom or dad," Greenlaw said. "They were mom and dad anyways, but it just makes it some type of commitment."

Almost a full year after that announcement, he found out he would have yet another family in his life. He was drafted to the 49ers in the fifth round.

It isn't exactly the easiest road in the world for a player to go from a fifth round pick to making the roster, much less becoming a starter. However, Greenlaw had already traveled a more treacherous and much more mentally taxing road.

Compared to the path of his life, making an NFL roster and sticking was a breeze. God had already laid out everything he needed along the way to make it happen. That included the two interceptions against Texas A&M.

As he said, 'Hopefully, all this will result in a win one day. Eventually." And it did. That one day revealed itself against the Packers Saturday. His eventual finally came. Just like it did when he finally got the family a scared 10-year-old who found himself behind bars needed for so long.