TAMPA, Fla. — Tyler Badie’s 43-yard fourth-quar­ter burst on Sun­day served mul­ti­ple purposes.

It set up the Bron­cos’ final field goal of a 26–7 throt­tling of Tam­pa Bay.

It was the team’s longest rush of the sea­son by far.

It pro­vid­ed yet anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for every­one to learn the appar­ent, actu­al pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Badie (Ba-day).

One oth­er demar­ca­tion, indica­tive of Denver’s offen­sive pic­ture ear­ly in the 2024 sea­son: It put Badie in posi­tion to be the first play­er besides rook­ie quar­ter­back Bo Nix to lead the Bron­cos in rush­ing for a game this year.

Even head­ing out of a Week 3 win and toward Sunday’s matchup at the New York Jets, Nix is Denver’s sea­son leader in rush­ing at 18 car­ries for 107 yards. Badie’s sec­ond at 86 yards on 10 car­ries, Javonte Williams has 52 (2.2 per car­ry) and Jaleel McLaugh­lin checks in fourth at 40 (2.2 per).

Nix car­ried the ball nine times for 47 yards and his sec­ond rush­ing touch­down of the sea­son Sun­day against the Bucs and he was pro­duc­tive in a vari­ety of ways.

Three of his car­ries for 14 yards were designed zone reads where he could have hand­ed the ball off or kept it and he decid­ed to run himself.

He sneaked the ball twice in short-yardage sit­u­a­tions, both for first downs.

He scram­bled twice, both for first downs — a 5‑yarder and a 22-yarder.

He scored eas­i­ly on a naked boot­leg in which he deci­sive­ly pulled the ball down when he saw he had lever­age to the front cor­ner of the end zone

The final car­ry on his ledger was a kneel-down at the end of the game.

On the eight before that, though, Nix was efficient.

He gen­er­at­ed six first downs. He car­ried the ball four times on third or fourth down and picked up a first down each time. The sneaks are part of that equa­tion, of course, but he also did it on zone read, and he did it scram­bling on designed throws.

The Bron­cos have ratch­eted up the designed runs for Nix, too.

He had none in the open­er against Seat­tle, gen­er­at­ing all 35 yards on five car­ries via scramble.

Against Pitts­burgh in Week 2, Nix had two scram­bles and two designed quar­ter­back draws.

So the read game addi­tions against Tam­pa rep­re­sent anoth­er lay­er of Nix’s game to unfurl.

“We got to a few quar­ter­back read runs, which, if they load the front, how do you get your num­bers back?” Pay­ton said Mon­day. “One way of doing that is your quar­ter­back becomes a threat. There were two or three instances where it might have been a give to Badie or a keep and I think there were a cou­ple of designs that helped us.

“Then we blocked it well.”

The ques­tion is to what extent Den­ver can build it into its plans going for­ward with­out expos­ing the 24-year-old quar­ter­back to too much risk.

“There’s two ways he can end up run­ning, right?” Pay­ton said. “He can scram­ble on a pass play and then he’s got to be smart. Or he can be involved in the run game plan. There’s not as much con­trol on the A. On the B, there’s a lit­tle more con­trol to what we’re doing that week and who we’re playing.”

What’s clear, though, is Nix is com­fort­able and con­fi­dent run­ning and he’s got wheels, too. Accord­ing to Next Gen Stats, he’s hit 15 miles per hour on 12 runs this sea­son, tied for eighth-most in the NFL. And he’s one of only 12 play­ers in the league to hit 20 miles per hour on a run play this season.

How much Den­ver leans on Nix in the run game going for­ward remains to be seen and like­ly will change week to week.

One thing that’s a cer­tain­ty, though, is that the rookie’s legs give the Jets and oth­er future oppo­nents anoth­er vari­able to have to account for.

One small thing I liked. The Bron­cos’ pass rush spent the entire sec­ond half on a heater. The num­bers at this point — sev­en sacks, includ­ing two for Don­drea Till­man in his NFL debut — are well estab­lished. But the con­sis­ten­cy was even more impres­sive than the end result.

Den­ver pres­sured or sacked Tam­pa quar­ter­back Bak­er May­field on every full pos­ses­sion of the sec­ond half.

By The Post’s count and NGS data, the Bron­cos racked up six sacks and nine addi­tion­al pres­sures after halftime.

Dri­ve 1: Sack, pressure

Dri­ve 2: Pres­sure, sack

Dri­ve 3: 2 sacks, 4 pres­sures in a sev­en-play span

Dri­ve 4: 2 sacks, 3 pressures

The sum total is Den­ver pres­sured May­field on 15 of 26 sec­ond-half drop-backs.

For the sea­son, the Bron­cos check in at No. 3 in the NFL in over­all pres­sure rate through three weeks at 44.8%, trail­ing only Hous­ton (46.2%) and the Jets (45.6%).

Quar­ter­backs beware Sun­day at MetLife Stadium.

One small thing I didn’t like. Sim­i­lar to 2023, the Bron­cos tight ends are off to a rough start on the sea­son. Adam Traut­man and Nate Adkins each had catch­es Sun­day for a total of 19 yards. Greg Dul­ci­ch, though, did not and wasn’t tar­get­ed at all.

Through three games, the third-year man out of UCLA has five catch­es on 11 tar­gets for 28 yards.

The Bron­cos are get­ting some of that lack of pro­duc­tion replaced by receivers like Lil’Jordan Humphrey (10 catch­es on 14 tar­gets for 87 yards) work­ing most­ly under­neath cov­er­age. But they need far more from the tight ends to be a pro­duc­tive offense mov­ing forward.

One trend to watch. All-Pro cor­ner­back Pat Sur­tain II has trav­eled with the oth­er team’s top wide receiv­er through most of the first three weeks.

His assign­ments to date: DK Met­calf in Week 1, George Pick­ins in Week 2 and Mike Evans in Week 3.

Next up: Young, bud­ding Jets star Gar­rett Wil­son. The third-year receiv­er has crest­ed 1,000 yards each of his first two sea­sons and has 15 catch­es for 150 yards through three games this year. As he and quar­ter­back Aaron Rodgers con­tin­ue to devel­op chem­istry, it fig­ures to be a dan­ger­ous connection.

The Bron­cos like­ly will ask Sur­tain to try to dis­rupt that progress for most of Sun­day afternoon.

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