Bron­cos quar­ter­back Drew Lock had no rea­son to be con­fi­dent when offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Pat Shurmur’s game plan began to down­load onto his iPad last week.

Lock had thrown 10 inter­cep­tions in the last five games and the offense was mired in a sea­son-long funk. Plus, he was nurs­ing an injury to his chest.

But …

“When I saw the game plan come rolling in, a lit­tle on Mon­day, a lit­tle on Tues­day, you’re like, ‘OK, here we go. We’re going to roll this week,’” Lock said.

Believe it or not, the Bron­cos’ offense did get on a roll, the kind of roll envi­sioned when run­ning back Melvin Gor­don was signed this past sea­son to join Phillip Lind­say. A two-pronged run­ning game. Yards after con­tact. Chunk plays. Steady gains.

And a win.

Led by a sea­son-high 189 yards rush­ing, the Bron­cos over­came Gordon’s goal-line fum­ble to post a 20–13 upset win over surg­ing Mia­mi when safe­ty Justin Sim­mons inter­cept­ed quar­ter­back Ryan Fitzpatrick’s pass in the end zone with 1:03 remaining.

Gor­don rushed 15 times for 84 yards and two touch­downs. Lind­say, lim­it­ed to four car­ries in last week’s loss at Las Vegas, had 16 attempts for 82 yards.

“(Run­ning it) was a big part of win­ning that game, obvi­ous­ly,” coach Vic Fan­gio said after the Bron­cos improved to 4–6 and gained a sea­son-best 459 yards. “I’ve always said a quarterback’s two best friends are a run­ning game and a good defense and for the most part, we had that going.”

The defense pro­duced six sacks and five three-and-outs and sealed the game after Fitz­patrick, who replaced rook­ie Tua Tago­v­ailoa with 10:44 remain­ing, led the Dol­phins from their 1‑yard line into the red zone.

And Lindsay/Gordon — it only took until the 10th game to see the Bron­cos’ plan of a 1–1A run­ning back tan­dem in full force.

“When you’re run­ning it decent­ly and play­ing good defense, the whole com­plex­ion of the game is dif­fer­ent,” Fan­gio said.

Big-time dif­fer­ent. The Bron­cos didn’t have to chase the game so Shur­mur could stick with his plan. Gordon/Lindsay had sev­en first-quar­ter car­ries, five in the sec­ond, 11 in the third and eight in the fourth.

Lindsay’s 20-yard car­ry sparked the first scor­ing dri­ve. Gor­don had a 25-yard car­ry and a 20-yard touch­down. Lind­say had sec­ond-half rush­es of 18 and 20 yards. The Bron­cos fin­ished with five explo­sive rush­es (gain of at least 12 yards) — they had only 17 in the first nine games combined.

“(Teams) all do the same thing; it’s about exe­cut­ing,” Lind­say said. “There’s no sci­ence to it. Can you get five yards? Can you get the touch­down? Can you get a first down? That’s all it is. We, as peo­ple, make things too com­pli­cat­ed. It’s Point A to Point B.”

Lindsay’s the­o­ry is well-tak­en. Sim­plic­i­ty and attempt­ing to go from Point A to Point B was also Plan A, but Fan­gio said Shur­mur used a “cou­ple” of new run plays, too.

“We were able to stay with it, too, and that’s two-fold,” Fan­gio said. “Part of the prob­lem in the Atlanta game, we got too far behind. The Raiders game, we would run it and go three-and-out a bunch and that cuts down on your opportunities.”

Said Lock: “Our run game exploded.”

The Bron­cos sent home the announced crowd of 5,351 with some­thing to cheer about. The remain­ing home games against New Orleans, Buf­fa­lo and Las Vegas will not have fans present. When the Mile High stands are (hope­ful­ly) filled next year, the Bron­cos will look dif­fer­ent, but how much so?

What beat­ing Mia­mi could show gen­er­al man­ag­er John Elway is that maybe, just maybe, stay­ing the course after a wacky 2020 is the most pru­dent move. You know, show some patience. Beat­ing the Dol­phins should serve as the prop­er barom­e­ter for Elway and Fangio.

Are the Bron­cos still flawed? Absolute­ly. They were minus‑1 in turnover dif­fer­en­tial. Lock’s inter­cep­tion led to Miami’s only touch­down and Gordon’s goal-line fum­ble cost the Bron­cos a chance to coast to the fin­ish line.

“It’s some­thing I work on every week and some­thing I think about and some­thing I try and be real­ly cau­tious about,” said Gor­don, who has lost four fum­bles this year.

Gordon’s reac­tion when Sim­mons inter­cept­ed Fitzpatrick?

“I was hap­py as hell,” Gor­don said with a laugh.

Are the Bron­cos turn­ing a pos­i­tive cor­ner? Next week’s game against New Orleans will tell. Remem­ber, the oper­a­tion appeared to be hum­ming after the Bron­cos won at the Jets and New Eng­land to improve to 2–3 and cer­tain­ly after they ral­lied to beat the Los Ange­les Charg­ers to move to 3–4. Even the aver­age teams find a way to stack two wins togeth­er. Mia­mi (6–4) was the first team the Bron­cos beat this year with a win­ning record.

Is Den­ver show­ing it can be all-around func­tion­al? Yes and that should be the key evi­dence for Elway. The offense con­trolled the line of scrim­mage, the defense had six sacks and five three-and-outs and the maligned spe­cial teams did their part.

“It was a great team win,” Fan­gio said.

A great team win at a great time with the noise sur­round­ing the Bron­cos increas­ing in vol­ume with every stinker. This was a team that wasn’t com­pet­i­tive at Atlanta in the first half and at Las Vegas in the sec­ond half. Anoth­er bad loss and the chat­ter would have inten­si­fied. But if the Bron­cos have found the elixir — run­ning game, pass rush and time­ly throws from Lock — at least they’ll be inter­est­ing down the stretch.

“It’s good we can lean on the run game, let it devel­op and have the line­back­ers move up so (Lock) can have open receivers,” Lind­say said. “(This) lets him know he doesn’t have to take the world on by him­self. We’re doing this as a unit.”