Drew Lock hears you. He knows you’ve been call­ing for his head.

The Bron­cos’ sec­ond-year quar­ter­back wants you to under­stand why the offense has strug­gled. Three quar­ter­backs in six games. Lots of injuries. Bunch of rook­ies. He him­self has only played three full games this season.

Lock is 100% cor­rect in his assess­ment, but if he is going to be suc­cess­ful in the NFL, he has to stop lis­ten­ing to you. He has to stop lis­ten­ing to all of us.

After the Bron­cos’ come­back win over the Charg­ers on Sun­day, Lock explained in detail why all of the haters are wrong and should shut their yaps. But “the haters” get paid to drum up dra­ma and intrigue around the game he plays, and he hap­pens to play the posi­tion that’s the tar­get of most of it.

Whether he likes it or not, Lock is liv­ing in the shad­ows of John Elway and Pey­ton Man­ning. What­ev­er he does will always be com­pared to the leg­ends of those two men. It doesn’t mat­ter how well Lock plays, there will be those who say it’s not good enough, who say the Bron­cos need to move on. And whichev­er “hater” is the most adamant will be hand­ed a megaphone.

This is not going to change no mat­ter how well he explains him­self at the podi­um. The trick is to find a way to block it out: to rise above the nar­ra­tive and set­tle into a bal­anced men­tal state where both praise and crit­i­cism fall on deaf ears.

You know why the fourth quar­ter looked so good for Lock? He was final­ly play­ing ball. The anx­i­ety, expec­ta­tions, con­cepts and coach­ing — all of it melt­ed away and what was left was a guy play­ing a game with his friends. This is the sweet spot that suc­cess­ful quar­ter­backs find a way to live inside of — not just in the fourth quar­ter. Every quar­ter, every play, every day.

It is one thing to use the “haters” as moti­va­tion to prove them wrong. We all need oppo­si­tion to thrive. But to allow them into your head­space — to hear their voic­es when you take the field, and to imme­di­ate­ly think of them in your moment of tri­umph — is to lose half your pow­er. There’s a rea­son why you are on that field and they are not. You are the tip of the spear. The man in the are­na. And you can’t cut through buf­fa­lo hide dur­ing a stam­pede if you’re look­ing back over your shoul­der at the naysayers.

So how do you drown out the noise in an era when there is so much of it? Lean for­ward, keep your eyes on the hori­zon, and stay off social media.

Sports requires com­plete devo­tion to the moment. That’s why we love it.

For a devot­ed fan, sports is a wild roller coast­er of emo­tions. But for the man in the are­na, it must be some­thing dif­fer­ent. You’re not high. You’re not low. You are a laser beam in the mid­dle. And lasers don’t have time for haters.