Following a game with some of the worst football and some of the best football we have seen from the Broncos, head coach Sean Payton made it clear that changes could be coming.

“I think you start with who,” said the head coach, noting its important to look at the “Who is it we’re asking to do certain things? There may be some guys [whose] playing time goes up and some might begin to diminish.”

The No. 1 goal this week as the Broncos get ready to host a hot Cowboys team is to figure out why the Broncos have had such slow starts on offense and seem to only play well when their backs are against the wall.

“It’s been encouraging that we’ve been able to finish some games…We’re going to play in bigger games, and we’re going to have to be a lot more efficient in the first half of games.”

— SEAN PAYTON

“It’s been encouraging that we’ve been able to finish some games,” Payton said, “and … we’re going to play in bigger games, and we’re going to have to be a lot more efficient in the first half of games.”

That is an understatement to end all understatements.

Down 19-0 at the start of the fourth quarter on Sunday, the Broncos’ offense had managed only seven first downs in its eight possessions and had made it past midfield only once. And the defense gave up just about every third-and-long or fourth-and-long conversion by the Giants.

“That’s nuts,” Payton said. “Offensively, we really didn’t amount to anything until we got into the end of the game, fourth quarter. Mental errors, mistakes, snaps, wrong reads, you name it.”

But against all odds (like literally 1,602 of them), the defense got its first takeaway, and the offense heated up, finding 33 points in 14 minutes to beat the Giants.

“I don’t even know how to score 33 points in a quarter,” Nix said after the game. “That’s kind of insane, but it’s just whatever we had to get done, and we did it.”

By now you know those 33 points scored in the fourth quarter is a franchise record and the most points in the fourth quarter in NFL history by a team that was shut out through three quarters, according to NFL Research.

“We’re fighters,” Marvin Mims Jr. said. “We fought back and ended up winning. Being down that much and coming back to win, it says something about our team.”

But now the challenge is figuring out how to avoid that three-quarter mental collapse before just leaning on the comeback mojo.

It certainly won’t be finding a new play caller, Payton assured the media, because he has no intention of giving that up.

“No,” he said. “I think we’re comfortable as an offensive staff of how we’re operating.”