ENGLEWOOD — The Broncos are going to win with Sean Payton, but it won’t be this season.

This season the Broncos will win six of 17 games. Seven, if the Raiders are really that bad.

The good news is the Broncos finally are on the right track. They hired a future Pro Football Hall of Fame coach who won 63% of his games over 15 seasons with the Saints, and Super Bowl XLIV, and counts as his mentor Bill Parcells, the second-best coach of the past 25 years.

Only Bill Belichick is better, and Parcells’ specialty was flipping losing teams into winners.

That’s Payton’s project in Denver, which owns the second-longest playoffs drought in the NFL.

Payton, who turns 60 in December, will flip the Broncos from losers into winners — in 2024.

Not this year, though. This year, the Broncos are the Denver Ifs, a team with a near-zero margin for error that must have all the stars both align and perform and just about everything go right.

The Broncos end their seven-year playoff hiatus if:

— The Chiefs win fewer than 10 games for the first time in Patrick Mahomes’ six seasons as the starting quarterback.

— The Chargers go backwards for the first time in the young career of quarterback Justin Herbert, who’s won six, nine and 10 games in consecutive seasons.

— The AFC West comes back to earth. Payton led the 2006 Saints to the playoffs in his first season as coach, though New Orleans was the only NFC South team to finish above .500.

— Broncos rookies Jaleel McLaughlin and Marvin Mims Jr. add an element of speed to an offense that looks a step slow.

— Vance Joseph revives his reputation in Broncos Country (“This is home,” the CU-Boulder grad said) by coordinating a top-five scoring defense.

— “VJ” lures 45-plus sacks out of a pass-rushing group he called “the best room I’ve had in a long time.” The Broncos last year managed only 36 sacks, second-fewest in the league.

— Javonte Williams is the unofficial team MVP after recovering from knee surgery to become the team’s first 1,000-yard rusher since Phillip Lindsay in 2019.

— The Broncos don’t melt down and blow up in the fourth quarter like last season, when nine losses came by seven points or fewer.

— Russell Wilson looks like Seahawks Russ (an average of 29 touchdowns vs. nine interceptions), not What Have You Done With Russ (16 touchdowns, 11 picks and a career-low 60.5 completion percentage with the Broncos).

— The $38 million offensive line, the priciest position group on the roster, cuts in half its league-high 63 sacks allowed.

— The Broncos go 7-2 at Empower Field at Mile High. The extra game is at home this season. In five of the last six seasons the Broncos fell short of a winning record at Mile High, a wild thought.

— The Broncos don’t finish last in the division for a fourth-straight season for the first time since 1967, when Payton was 4.

— The Broncos cut down on penalties, of which they had 113, second-most in the league.

— Jerry Jeudy tops 1,000 receiving yards and six touchdowns for the first time. Payton had at least one 1,000-yard receiver in 12 of 15 seasons with the Saints.

— The Broncos enter their Week 9 bye with a 6-2 record, the only losses coming at Miami (Week 3) and at Kansas City (Week 8 on a Thursday night). The back half of the schedule has three-straight road games and a fourth at Super Bowl-contending Buffalo on a Monday night.

— The injuries stop, or at least slow down to a manageable pace. August alone saw injuries or ailments to Baron Browning, Mike McGlinchey, Alex Palczewski, P.J. Locke, K’Waun Williams, Jeudy, Jalen Virgil, Jonas Griffith, Riley Moss, Tim Patrick and KJ Hamler.

If most of those things happen, the Broncos will win with Payton — sooner rather than later.