The last time the Broncos’ defense took the field, it had an off night.

Vance Joseph’s unit, one of the best in the NFL by nearly every measure this fall, got shredded for 552 yards by Jameis Winston and the Cleveland Browns.

Denver probably doesn’t win to get to its bye week 8-5 and firmly in playoff position, though, without a trio of interceptions by Nik Bonitto, Ja’Quan McMillian and Cody Barton.

In that way, the outing was uncharacteristic but also emblematic.

Emblematic of a team that’s learned how to persevere.

Emblematic of a group that has gone from finding creative ways to lose to proving it can win in a variety of ways.

Emblematic of a team that’s far outpaced external expectations and done so with a roster that’s mostly devoid of household names but has put the league on notice thanks to a combination of young talent, shrewd free-agent additions and an internal belief that this did not have to be a rebuilding season.

The three guys that picked Winston off are prefect examples.

Bonitto was the team’s top draft pick in 2022 (No. 64 overall) and had a nice sophomore campaign, but has exploded from backup in September to peripheral defensive player of the year contender in December.

McMillian went undrafted that same year and started 2023 as Denver’s backup nickel. Now he’s a linchpin in Joseph’s operation, relied on to communicate, cover up mistakes and make big plays.

Barton was a blip-on-the-radar one-year free agent deal this spring who transitioned to calling Joseph’s defense smoothly after Alex Singleton’s Week 3 ACL injury. He has played all but five garbage-time snaps against Atlanta the past 10 games and has a pair of interceptions plus a fumble return for a touchdown on his ledger.

On offense? Same story. A resurgent top receiver and a 27-year-old, seventh-round rookie right behind him. A handsomely paid offensive line centered by a little-known, first-time starter. A rotation of running backs, a modestly productive tight end group and a rookie quarterback who saw five other guys at his position picked before him back in April.

Any of them might acknowledge there were unknowns back in the spring, but all of them will say the same thing: They believed this team would outperform the 5.5-win total Las Vegas proffered. They all sensed this group had the goods to surprise people.

And they all know it doesn’t mean much if they don’t turn 8-5 into a playoff run.

“Since we got back here in April, everybody knew we were going to be better than everybody thought on the outside,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey told The Post. “We were young, a little bit nameless, a little bit like, ‘Oh we’ve got a rookie quarterback, you don’t know.’ Whatever. Whatever the slights against us were, we’ve proven to answer the bell on every one of those calls. I’m really proud of that.

“But again, we’re not where we want to be yet. Until we get there, until we start winning games in the playoffs, none of this matters.”“We’re playing for right now”

That sentiment from McGlinchey tracks even if it’s not exactly true.

Yes, faltering now would spoil the fun and be cause for concern.

Still, this has already been a fruitful fall for the Broncos in several ways.

They’ve identified and extended several core future pieces in guard Quinn Meinerz, cornerback Pat Surtain II, outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper and most recently left tackle Garett Bolles.

They put together a draft class that looks like a good one already, from quarterback Bo Nix in the first round to receiver Devaughn Vele in the seventh.

They’ve seen breakout seasons from Bonitto and second-year corner Riley Moss, received career-best play from defensive lineman Zach Allen and in the offseason found multi-year defensive contributors in safety Brandon Jones and defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers.

All of it works together.

None of it is as critical as Nix’s development.

When you have a quarterback in the NFL, you have a chance.

When you first realize you have a quarterback, the timeline for everything else changes with the snap of a finger.

“Certainly at the midpoint of the season when we were starting to roll a little bit, everybody was like, ‘OK, we’ve got something here,’” McGlinchey said of Nix. “This isn’t going to be a year that — we’re not playing to develop. We’re playing for right now. And I think we’re just scratching the surface of what we can be and I think that kid is just scratching the surface of what he’s going to be.

“It’s going to be fun to hold on to the coattails and see where we can go.”

Franchises draft quarterbacks hoping that they instill that kind of confidence in their team at some point. Sometimes it takes a long time. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. This year, even in a rookie quarterback group that’s shaping up to be really good and perhaps exceptional, only Nix and Washington’s Jayden Daniels are helming potential playoff teams.

“You didn’t know, but obviously the trust they have upstairs for Sean (Payton)’s vision, you just kind of had to trust it,” Trautman said. “We did and we were fully behind him and that’s turned out pretty well.

“I’d say that turned out pretty damn good.”

Under the radar

Payton has liked this group from the start.

He called it “young and hungry” during training camp. He’s said it’s entirely different from the 2023 team in terms of leadership and approach.

Before the season began, he mostly kept a straight face when asked locally about expectations, though he did turn up the heat a notch in an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune when he said, “I love being the underdog. The next time I only win six games will be the first.”

This week, Payton was asked about the chance to end Denver’s streak of losing seasons by getting its ninth win Sunday.

“I don’t know that one person downstairs — myself included — has thought about right now this team just having a winning season,” he said. “I think our aspirations are a little higher.”

Trautman has a theory on expectations.

The Broncos were widely seen as more likely picking high in the 2025 draft than playing well into January.

“Sometimes it comes down to a names thing when people looked at our roster in the spring,” the tight end said. “They looked at our roster and maybe thought, ‘Oh, this guy is not a household name and this guy isn’t.’ But we look at it differently because we’re like, ‘That guy is really good, but nobody knows it.’ But we knew what we had.”

Trautman can run down the list of under-appreciated talents, but comes back quickly to Cooper and Bonitto. They’re now “one of the best duo of edge rushers in the league,” in his mind.

He’s just getting warmed up.

“Courtland (Sutton)’s turned into a top wide receiver right now,” he said of the 2018 second-rounder who’s averaging 95 yards over his past six games. “Last year he just didn’t have the production. Who knows what that was, but look at him now. You watch him in practice and you’re like, ‘Yeah, that dude’s elite.’ Then the o-line. That takes a second to become cohesive as well. Nobody talks about o-line much, but when you’re built up front, o-line and d-line, everything else kind of falls into place.”

There’s Moss and McMillian and Vele and several others, too.

“We’ve got guys like that littered everywhere,” Trautman said.

Cooper, who signed a four-year extension last month, believed in the group’s talent but also its mettle.

A seventh-round pick in 2021, Cooper hasn’t yet won more than eight games in a season as a pro.

“We’ve been close,” he said. “I know our record maybe doesn’t speak for it, but all those games if you look back at them the past couple of years have been one-score games. And when you have a team that’s always getting right there, right there, right there, it’s bound to crack.

“As long as you keep putting the work in. We just kept doing that.”

Broncos players across the board say they’ve expected it since they arrived for offseason workouts back in April.

“First and foremost it comes from our head coach. He believed in us right from the start,” McGlinchey said. “He believed in the team they put together. He and (general manager) George (Paton) did a great job of finding talent in our locker room and placing it where it needed to be. The work that we put in since April 15 or whenever the hell we came back, I think there was always this, ‘They want to doubt us, they want to doubt us. We’re not going to let it happen. We can’t doubt each other or ourselves.’

“It’s just been a gradual process this whole year. You gain confidence through great work and that’s what it’s been.”

Now, the next part

Half of the Broncos’ remaining games come in a five-day span between Indianapolis and a Thursday night game at the Los Angeles Chargers.

They could have a playoff spot clinched by the time they fly home from the West Coast or they could see their postseason hopes crushed by a pair of losses.

They could end up fighting tooth-and-nail just to make the postseason or they could, with a little help, end up pushing for as high as the No. 5 seed in the field.

“I’m excited,” McGlinchey said. “I think that we’re capable of beating anybody and I think the rest of the league knows that. That’s an exciting place to be in and the games that we’ve played, even the ones we’ve lost, we’ve been right there. With the exception of Baltimore. That’s an exciting opportunity for us.”

Sunday, then, will bring a different kind of pressure than a Broncos team has felt in a regular-season game since 2016. The next four games, they’ll try to put to bed the second-longest postseason drought in the NFL.

They’ve made it this far in an unconventional way. Led by a rookie quarterback. Unencumbered by a league-high $83 million in dead salary cap charges. Labeled as a group that likely needed a rebuilding year but instead accelerated faster than expected. Lacking in megawatt stars but chock full of players who know their roles and play them well.

It all portends well for the long-term future. But from here, on the doorstep to the dance, that kind of talk can wait.

There’s only one way this ends well for the Broncos in 2024. And they all know it.

“The playoffs are everything,” Allen said. “It just sucks watching them from home. Once you go, you’d think, ‘Oh, at least we can bounce back.’ But you re-start from square one. It’s crazy the amount of work that has to go into it to get there.

“The fact we’re in the position we’re in now (is great), but the job’s not finished.”