Phillip Lind­say is ready for Mon­day night against Tennessee.

“Get me in the game right now and I’m going to break some­thing,” he said.

Melvin Gor­don is ready to go, too.

“They love to run the ball here and obvi­ous­ly, I love to run the ball as a run­ning back so it works out,” he said.

But as the Bron­cos con­tin­ue prepa­ra­tions for the Titans, the big ques­tions of mid-March (when Gor­don signed), late July (when play­ers report­ed to camp) and mid-August (when prac­tices began) remain unanswered.

Who will start the game? Who will get more play­ing time? Who will have more car­ries? Who will play on third down? Who will be asked to catch pass­es out of the back­field? Who will play in a two-minute situation?

Nat­u­ral­ly, amid the hub­bub, the Bron­cos’ coach­es don’t think it’s an issue.

“I have a feel­ing they’re both going to be in there and hope­ful­ly an equal amount of time and have an impact obvi­ous­ly as run­ners and cer­tain­ly in pass pro­tec­tion and catch­ing the ball,” offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Pat Shur­mur said before prac­tice Fri­day. “They’ve dis­played in camp sort of what I knew about them on tape.

“They’re mul­ti-dimen­sion­al backs so we’re going to try and use them both. In my mind, it’s a good prob­lem to have.”

Shur­mur is cer­tain­ly jus­ti­fied in embrac­ing this good prob­lem — being able to inter­change between Gor­don (1,058 car­ries and 224 catch­es in career) and Lind­say (416 car­ries and 70 catches).

“They’re two out­stand­ing run­ners that both deserve to be a starter and that’s how I think of them,” Shur­mur said. “Who plays the first snap? It doesn’t real­ly matter.”

Hav­ing a two-head­ed run­ning game isn’t for­eign to the NFL in gen­er­al or the Bron­cos in par­tic­u­lar. This remains a super-phys­i­cal game and the pound­ing tail­backs take means sig­nif­i­cant attri­tion. Only nine backs played at least 60% of their team’s snaps last year.

Since 2010, there have been 56 instances in which a team has two run­ning backs with at least 125 car­ries. The Bron­cos, New York Jets and Tam­pa Bay lead with four such seasons.

What could help Lind­say and Gor­don is a shared-duty set-up won’t be new.

Lind­say teamed with Royce Free­man in 2018–19 and Gor­don shared the work on the Charg­ers with Austin Ekeler.

This time last year, Lind­say was start­ing for the Bron­cos against the Raiders and Gor­don was hold­ing out, miss­ing the first three games.

“I missed a lot of foot­ball last year and obvi­ous­ly I had a way short­er sea­son than the rest of the league,” Gor­don said. “All in all, I’m excit­ed to get back out there and go from Day One. Foot­ball-wise, I’m excit­ed to see what this game brings me this year.”

Gor­don, 27, has car­ried at least 20 times in only 20 of his 67 reg­u­lar-sea­son games; Lind­say has reached 20 car­ries only once in 31 games. Thus, the need to sign to Gor­don even if the less expen­sive play would have been wait­ing for the draft.

But know­ing he was build­ing an offense around young quar­ter­back Drew Lock, gen­er­al man­ag­er John Elway was proac­tive, sign­ing Gor­don to a two-year, $16 mil­lion contract.

“I think this scheme is real­ly built around what I excel at,” said Gor­don, cit­ing the pres­ence of inside and out­side zone plays.

Said Titans coach Mike Vra­bel: “(Gor­don) has a good com­bi­na­tion of size and speed. (The Charg­ers) used him in pre­vi­ous years out of the back­field and threw him the ball and tar­get­ing him in the red zone.”

Con­sec­u­tive 1,000-yard sea­sons wasn’t enough for Lind­say to earn a con­tract exten­sion and he will be a restrict­ed free agent in March.

“I can’t con­trol putting myself in the game,” Lind­say said. “I don’t need 20 car­ries to get where I need to go. I’m going to be a spark player.”

Gor­don (who bat­tled a rib injury) and Lind­say looked sharp dur­ing train­ing camp prac­tices as run­ning backs and Gor­don makes catch­ing pass­es to the flats look effortless.

“They’re going to be putting crazy pres­sure (on defens­es),” Bron­cos inside line­backer Alexan­der John­son said. “They’re both ath­let­ic, both fast, both know how to read defens­es, know how to cut. That’s a per­fect line­up of run­ning backs. You can bring them in and out and do all the dif­fer­ent things with them.”

Dividing the carries

The Bron­cos are expect­ed to divide the run-game duties between Phillip Lind­say and Melvin Gor­don. Since 2000, a run­down of the years in which they had two backs with at least 125 carries:

Year      Play­er (attempts)     Play­er (attempts)

2001     Mike Ander­son (175)      Ter­rell Davis (167)

2005     Ander­son (239) Tatum Bell (173)

2006     Bell (233)    Mike Bell (157)

2007     Travis Hen­ry (167)   Selvin Young (140)

2012     Willis McGa­hee (167)     Know­shon Moreno (138)

2015     Ron­nie Hill­man (207)     C.J. Ander­son (152)

2018     Phillip Lind­say (192) Royce Free­man (130)

2019     Lind­say (224)     Free­man (132)