Dur­ing his five-game debut last year when he showed enough poten­tial to be the Bron­cos’ start­ing quar­ter­back Mon­day night against Ten­nessee, Drew Lock com­plet­ed 100 passes.

He threw short — 26 behind the line of scrim­mage. He worked the mid­dle of the field — an iden­ti­cal 26 that trav­eled 1–15 yards in the air. And he took some shots — six that trav­eled at least 16 yards in the air.

But months lat­er, when asked if there was a touch­stone play in which his con­fi­dence was con­firmed and he felt like this NFL deal wasn’t too big for him, Lock had an imme­di­ate reply.

“I would go with the seam ball to Noah (Fant) against Hous­ton,” he said in an inter­view with The Den­ver Post.

Lock’s sec­ond start was against the Tex­ans. A promis­ing open­ing dri­ve had stalled and the Bron­cos faced third-and-12 from the Hous­ton 14-yard line. It was time for one of the league’s worst red-zone offens­es to take an ear­ly lead. Lock was in the shot­gun and Fant, the tight end, was lined up in the left slot.

“Hous­ton is a very good team and the last time I was in that city, (Mis­souri) got our butts kicked by Texas (33–16 in a bowl game),” Lock said. “We end­ed up run­ning that seam (route) to Noah and it felt like col­lege — ‘OK, he’s got his back turned to me, he doesn’t know where the ball is and I’m going to put it right over his hel­met and Noah’s going to catch this thing.’

“And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. I thought, ‘I had played that through my head and it just hap­pened against a start­ing NFL defense that is real­ly good.’ I think I can do this.”

Lock should believe he can do “this” and serve as the answer to the Bron­cos’ quar­ter­back ques­tion. And the Bron­cos should believe he can do “this” and sta­bi­lize the sport’s most impor­tant position.

“He wants to be great,” run­ning back Melvin Gor­don said. “He’s a com­pet­i­tive per­son and I like that. I like a guy that’s going to put it all out there on the line for you. You like to be led by guys like that.”

And to be great, you have to be open to coach­ing, and as he pre­pares for his first full year as a starter, he will lean on Justin Hoover and Mike Shula.

Strong ties with personal coach

Hoover is the head coach at Shawnee Mis­sion East High School in sub­ur­ban Kansas City, but he’s almost more well-known for his work as the own­er and oper­a­tor of Spin It Quar­ter­back Academy.

Hoover has been pro­vid­ing Lock with per­son­al instruc­tion for near­ly a decade.

Dur­ing Lock’s col­lege career, Hoover — with an eye toward the NFL and the elite defen­sive backs Lock would be fac­ing — focused on mak­ing his throw­ing process more com­pact and rota­tion­al to match up the fundamentals/anticipation so body/mind can func­tion together.

Fast for­ward to last Novem­ber, when Lock was acti­vat­ed from injured reserve and named the starter against the Los Ange­les Chargers.

Hoover was ing Lock’s five starts with two pur­pos­es — to show sup­port for his long-time stu­dent but also work up a to-do list for the 2020 offseason.

“Con­fi­dence and tough­ness,” was what stood out, Hoover said. “When it was time to go, he was ready for it.”

And when the sea­son was com­plet­ed and Lock returned to the Kansas City area, Hoover was ready to work.

But because of coro­n­avirus, Hoover and Lock had to impro­vise. Hoover said they “found any patch of grass we could and if it was nice enough, we just made it work.” The pro­hi­bi­tion on groups of peo­ple con­ven­ing to train meant it was just Hoover and Lock most of the time.

Hoover focused on two things: Align­ment and sim­u­lat­ing move­ments that will allow Lock to avoid pass rushers.

Hoover want­ed Lock to cre­ate a “straight-line” throw, mean­ing he was lead­ing with his front foot for more veloc­i­ty and accu­ra­cy on his throws. And in the pock­et, Hoover want­ed to fine-tune Lock’s “spa­tial aware­ness” so he would know how to keep his fun­da­men­tals tight even when he is try­ing to extend the play. Dur­ing off days last month, Lock sent Hoover prac­tice clips to have his pock­et pres­ence and throw­ing motion eval­u­at­ed. Before the next prac­tice, Hoover sent Lock spe­cif­ic point­ers. The rela­tion­ship runs long and the trust runs deep.

“(Hoover) is very good about putting drills togeth­er to put me in awk­ward posi­tions,” Lock said. “There’s no ques­tion that if he needs to give me a coach­ing point, he’s right. He’s 100% dialed into my mechan­ics, my stroke and where I throw it the best.”

His work in Mis­souri com­plete, Lock returned to the Den­ver area to begin in-per­son train­ing with Shula.

The right mindset

Lock is used to change — new play­books, new tech­niques, new coach­es and new play-callers. He had three offen­sive coor­di­na­tors at Mis­souri and with the Bron­cos, Year 2 means his sec­ond coor­di­na­tor (Pat Shur­mur) and quar­ter­back coach (Shu­la), respectively.

“I don’t know if you can find a more in-depth foot­ball mind,” Lock said of Shu­la. “The guys he’s worked with, the way he’s had to adapt, the way his quar­ter­backs were able to adapt — you can’t say enough about him.”

About that coach­ing his­to­ry. Shula’s quar­ter­backs have includ­ed Vin­ny Testaverde/Chris Chan­dler (Tam­pa Bay), Jay Fiedler (Mia­mi), Trent Dil­fer (Tam­pa Bay), David Gar­rard (Jack­sonville), Cam New­ton (Car­oli­na) and Daniel Jones (New York Giants). In 2015, New­ton won NFL MVP hon­ors when Shu­la was the Pan­thers’ play-caller and Car­oli­na lost to the Bron­cos in the Super Bowl.

The com­mon thread is devel­op­ing young passers.

“I’ve been real­ly lucky to coach young guys and old guys and learn a lot about them as I coached them,” Shu­la said in an inter­view with The Post. “I think the under­stand­ing and expe­ri­ence can be drawn upon. How guys some­times learn. Not to take any­thing for grant­ed that they see it the way you see it. It’s kind of like with your chil­dren — you make sure you’re clear with the communication.”

Shu­la first met Lock dur­ing the latter’s pre-draft vis­it to the Giants. Because of coro­n­avirus, their first sig­nif­i­cant meet­ing time was through video con­fer­enc­ing. Shu­la had ed all of last year’s video and had ideas, but they’ve been on the prac­tice field togeth­er for a lit­tle more than a month.

“The learn­ing curve has to increase because of the urgency,” Shu­la said. “He’s real­ly dialed in every day and he wants instant feed­back and that’s all you can ask of a young guy.”

What has been the take­away from ing Lock on the field in-per­son vs. his game video?

“Phys­i­cal­ly, I think he’s real­ly gift­ed,” Shu­la said. “He’s got such a quick release and he has a strong arm and dif­fer­ent release points, which you real­ly can’t coach in my opin­ion — either a guy has that or doesn’t. … I’ve prob­a­bly been more impressed see­ing him live than ing him in col­lege and at the combine.”

A key attribute Shu­la has already noticed about Lock: He’s account­able, often blam­ing him­self instant­ly for poor throws or deci­sions. But just as quick­ly, he moves onto the next play, a char­ac­ter­is­tic that is imper­a­tive. Quar­ter­backs who look back often find them­selves look­ing at some­body tak­ing his job.

Shu­la believes Lock will han­dle the adver­si­ty seam­less­ly. How will he han­dle a stinker of a game? How will he bounce back from a bad quar­ter or half? Not until Lock hits the prover­bial pot­hole will the Bron­cos know for sure.

“He’s a lit­tle hard on him­self at times, which is what you want from your quar­ter­back just as long as when you get to the game, one play doesn’t affect the next,” Shu­la said.

From afar, it didn’t look like Lock let one bad prac­tice spill into the next. That short-term mem­o­ry of sorts — for­get the bad plays, but remem­ber why the heck they hap­pened — will be the key to Lock end­ing the Bron­cos’ half-decade of offen­sive futility.

Five starts was enough for gen­er­al man­ag­er John Elway to not only move on from injured Joe Flac­co, but sign Jeff Driskel to be Lock’s back­up and not Lock’s com­pe­ti­tion and then, a month lat­er, draft receivers Jer­ry Jeudy and KJ Ham­ler in the first two rounds.

To start this sea­son, the puz­zle pieces are in place for Lock to have success.

“Some­times you real­ly have to try and press hard to get guys to be con­fi­dent and to be will­ing to be aggres­sive with the foot­ball,” ESPN ana­lyst Dan Orlovsky said. “That didn’t seem to be some­thing Drew hes­i­tat­ed with last year. I think because of the tal­ent and the play-caller and the peo­ple they have around him, he’s in a very, very healthy place.”