Those plays — the ones where the Broncos rise to the occasion — don’t all happen in the final moments. They come in the form of a first-half Dre Greenlaw interception to wipe points off the board or a downfield pass breakup from Alex Singleton. They look like an end-of-half touchdown drive, capped by a Bo Nix touchdown pass where he felt like he was “floating for a second.”

Then, of course, there are Engram’s 41-yard catch-and-run to set up the game-winning touchdown and Nik Bonitto’s pass breakup on a two-point conversion attempt.

Those moments are all accompanied by a resolute internal confidence that the Broncos will find a way.

“We got incredible belief no matter what,” said Bo Nix after tying John Elway for the most game-winning drives in a season in franchise history. “We just feel like we’re going to figure out a way to win the game, make the next play.”

The Broncos did that on “Sunday Night Football,” earning a win that counts the same as any other — and may feel particularly validating given the results around the league. Seven underdogs earned wins in Week 13, but the Broncos found a way to stave off another.

“Even if you look across the league this week, I mean, a lot of the teams that were supposed to win those games lost a lot of them,” Bonitto said. “You know, that’s what the championship teams [do] — you’re going to find ways to win, and we did that today, so we’re not going to take any wins for granted. We know this was a game that, you know, we wanted to win, and we found a way.”

The Broncos celebrated appropriately. The smoke poured out of the locker room. The speakers blared, providing the soundtrack to a victory celebration. There was certainly no apologizing for a 10th victory that pushed Denver’s AFC West chances to 85 percent and the team’s odds of getting the No. 1 seed to 36 percent, according to The Athletic’s playoff simulator.

“We [didn’t] escape,” Payton said, “We won.”

On a chilly Sunday night in Landover, the Broncos continued to show their mettle in tough spots — and they’ll look to turn an already memorable season into something greater.

“There’s something special, but we also feel like there’s more in the tank,” Nix said. “We also feel like there’s more to grow from. As much as we feel like we’ve had success, there’s a lot of guys in that locker room that are eager to perform better. We know that there’s a higher ceiling that we could play up to.”