The reju­ve­nat­ed Bron­cos run­ning game, which pro­duced a sea­son-high 189 yards in last week’s win over Mia­mi, will face arguably their most dif­fi­cult test Sun­day against New Orleans.

The Saints, who have won sev­en con­sec­u­tive games and are an NFC-best 8–2, are allow­ing only 74.3 yards rush­ing per game and 3.4 yards per car­ry, both sec­ond-best in the NFL.

In the last three games, the Saints have allowed eight rush­ing yards at Tam­pa Bay and 49 and 52 in home wins over San Fran­cis­co and Atlanta, respectively.

“Those guys up front just play real­ly, real­ly hard,” Bron­cos quar­ter­back Drew Lock said after prac­tice Wednes­day. “It’s dif­fer­ent when you have guys who are extreme­ly tal­ent­ed and can get away with tal­ent, but when you have a team that has guys who are extreme­ly tal­ent­ed and bust their butt — and you can see how hard they’re work­ing on film — that’s what this Saints defense is.

“You go down the line­up, you can name every sin­gle one of their play­ers and they all play like it’s their first year in the league. Fly­ing around. Hit­ting. Mak­ing the big plays.”

The Saints haven’t allowed a 100-yard rush­er this year (Las Vegas’ Josh Jacobs is tops at 88 yards in Week 2) and have allowed only two teams to reach 100 yards (Raiders 116, Los Ange­les Charg­ers 111).

Four­teen Saints have at least one tack­le for lost yardage in the run game. Line­backer Demario Davis and defen­sive end Cameron Jor­dan lead with 35 and 31 run-game tack­les, respectively.

“Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, you’re try­ing to play the game on their side of the line of scrim­mage and you need to have gap dis­ci­pline and play­ers need to under­stand their fits and then the obvi­ous would be, you have to tack­le well,” Saints coach Sean Pay­ton said in a con­fer­ence call with Den­ver media. “We’ve gone against a mul­ti­tude of offens­es and yet, those same things have to be in place for you to defend the run and defend it well.”

Glas­gow, Calla­han sit. Four Bron­cos did not prac­tice Wednes­day — right guard Gra­ham Glas­gow (calf), safe­ty Trey Mar­shall (shin), right tack­le Demar Dot­son (hand/groin/rest)  and cor­ner­back Bryce Calla­han (foot). Lim­it­ed par­tic­i­pants were cor­ner­back Duke Daw­son (chest), receiv­er Jer­ry Jeudy (ankle/Achilles), nose tack­le Sylvester Williams (elbow) and inside line­back­ers Josey Jew­ell (ankle) and Joe Jones (calf).

Lock (ribs) and tight end Noah Fant (ribs) were list­ed as full-go. Defen­sive end Shel­by Har­ris, out the last three games because of con­tact trac­ing (Atlanta) and a pos­i­tive COVID-19 test (Las Vegas and Mia­mi), remains on the reserve list.

“He’s get­ting bet­ter and improv­ing, but not enough yet to get off the list,” coach Vic Fan­gio said.

Fan­gio on Hall of Fame. Fan­gio was asked about Pro Foot­ball Hall of Fame semi­fi­nal­ists Pey­ton Man­ning and John Lynch and also used the forum to pro­mote two of his for­mer line­back­ers — Sam Mills (New Orleans) and Patrick Willis (San Francisco).

On Man­ning: “I fig­ured out Pey­ton was going to be pret­ty spe­cial when he was about 14 or 15 years old and came to the Saints’ facil­i­ty (where Fan­gio was an assis­tant) to throw pass­es in the offseason.”

On Mills: “Sam Mills deserves to be in there. Every­body thinks I’m biased and I prob­a­bly am, but I will tell you for a fact that there have been guys in this league who have been around Sam and oth­er play­ers that are in the Hall of Fame and they will tell you Sam was bet­ter as an inside line­backer than some of those in the Hall of Fame.”

On Willis: “He was a tremen­dous inside line­backer for (eight years) in San Fran­cis­co. Fastest inside line­backer I’ve ever coached. He was a great play­er, too.”

Fan­gio said Lynch “will even­tu­al­ly get in, I’m sure.”

More praise for Man­ning. Also deliv­er­ing high marks to Man­ning was Hall of Fame quar­ter­back Brett Favre dur­ing his week­ly co-host­ing appear­ance on The Sir­ius XM Blitz with Bruce Murray.

“If you pro­tect­ed (Man­ning) — and he had great pro­tec­tion for the most part (in) his career — he would just slice and dice you apart,” Favre said. “Obvi­ous­ly, I was nev­er a defen­sive coor­di­na­tor, but I got to be think­ing about (going against Man­ning) was a chess match that you knew you were not going to win. …

“One of my greater games was against the Colts in Indi­anapo­lis and man, I couldn’t miss. And I was about two touch­downs shy of win­ning that game. It was like, ‘I can’t do any­more and he’s unbe­liev­ably just com­plet­ing every pass.”

Favre’s recall is on-point. In Sep­tem­ber 2004, Favre was 30-of-44 pass­ing for 360 yards, four touch­downs, no inter­cep­tions and a 123.3 rat­ing … and Green Bay lost 45–31 to Indi­anapo­lis. Man­ning was 28-of-40 for 343 yards, five touch­downs (includ­ing two scores to Den­ver resident/radio host Bran­don Stok­ley) no inter­cep­tions and a 140.9 rating.

Foot­notes. Fan­gio said defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Ed Donatell (COVID-19) remains away from the team. “Hope­ful­ly it will be soon­er rather than lat­er that he can start com­ing in here (to work), even if it’s in a part-time basis,” Fan­gio said. …  The Bron­cos waived run­ning back LeV­ante Bel­lamy and acti­vat­ed inside line­backer Mark Bar­ron from injured reserve. Bar­ron sus­tained a ham­string injury in train­ing camp and hasn’t played this year. Right tack­le Jake Rodgers, waived on Tues­day, was claimed by Baltimore.