When the Broncos hop a flight to Baltimore, they’ll be traveling in a time machine back to the 1970s.

And waiting for them there will be big, bad King Henry.

Buckle up. This one’s gonna hurt.

The Denver defense has not only made some noise, but made the Broncos one of the happier surprises of this NFL season.

And that’s cool.

But Ravens running back Derrick Henry will now let us know if that defense is for real.

“They clog it up and wall it off,” Henry told reporters in Baltimore, giving kudos to the Broncos ability to stop the run.

While The King is gracious with compliments, he’s also quick to dish out bruises to body and ego.

With a heavy metal rushing attack that rocks harder than Led Zeppelin did on “Houses of the Holy” more than 50 years ago, Henry and the ground-and-pound Ravens will be the toughest test of Denver’s defensive mettle.

“It’s going to be stop-the-run first,” Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph said Thursday.

After signing a two-year, $16 million contract as a free agent with Baltimore in March, Henry has run for 946 yards in eight games. That production not only makes him far-and-away the league’s leading rusher, but has put him in contention, at age 30, to surpass NFL legends the stature of Barry Sanders and Terrell Davis as the only man in league history to rush for 2,000 yards in a season twice during a pro career.

In a pro football era when quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes rule, King Henry would not only like a word but the darn ball. He’s got damage to do.

With more than a little help from dual-threat quarterback Lamar Jackson, King and the Ravens have built the AFC’s highest-scoring offense with hammer and tongs. They are averaging a robust and intimidating 200 yards per game on the ground, an impressive 20 percent more than Philadelphia, which ranks second in the league at 165.9.

Although Jackson is nursing injuries that have kept him from practicing this week, Joseph not only expects the two-time MVP to be in the Baltimore huddle on Sunday, but be the fastest player on the field. When Joseph sees Jackson scamper with the football, he gets scary flashbacks to “Michael Vick back in the day.”

In a pass-happy league where defensive coordinators are fond of playing two deep safeties to eliminate the long ball, the Ravens are leading a renaissance of run-first football not seen to this extent since the 1970s, when Larry Csonka, Mercury Morris and Jim Kiick led the Miami Dolphins to an undefeated season and O.J. Simpson supplied the juice to the Electric Company in Buffalo.

The power of Baltimore’s rushing attack is it can force a defense to sell out and leave itself vulnerable to strategic long strikes capable of blowing the top off.

“The challenge with these guys in stopping the run first is you need numbers,” Joseph said. “So you’re playing single high (safety), you’re playing flat zero defenses. And now the pass game activates.”

The Ravens not only want to beat you, but in the grand tradition of football in their rust-belt, gray skies and blue-collar division, they want to beat you up.

“We play physical, too,” Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain said.

While Surtain has said Denver has the right stuff to not only qualify for the playoffs but make a run at the Super Bowl, the oddsmakers in Las Vegas seem to believe the muscle flexed by this Broncos defense is a mirage. They see Baltimore bringing the hammer down in this game, as prohibitive nine-point favorites.

OK, even a knucklehead like me is smart enough to understand If the Broncos get run over by the 247-pound Henry, there will be no stopping the Ravens.

In the five victories by Baltimore this year, Henry has averaged 148.6 yards rushing and a preposterous 7.2 yards per carry.

But make him look human and the Ravens are very beatable. In their three defeats this season, Henry has averaged 67.7 yards and a more manageable 4.8 yards per rush.

Want to be recognized and respected as the best defense in the NFL?

Well, all the Broncos need to do is conjure a little bit of that Orange Crush magic from the 1970s, go back to the future in Baltimore and knock King Henry on his … crown.