The Denver ‘Dogs did not give a hoot about some stinkin’ playoff drought.

Underdogs in most of their 17 games and pegged with a measly win total of 5.5, the Broncos told the experts what-for with a 38-0 win over the Chiefs to clinch a playoff berth.

Take that, experts!

“It’s so funny,” wide receiver Courtland Sutton said late Sunday with a smile as wide as the south stands at Mile High. “Hearing all the things: the Broncos are going to win four games, three games, two games and this and that. Got a rookie quarterback, blah, blah.”

Blah, blah… playoffs.

“You don’t have to be what people say you’re going to be,” said Bo Nix, the rookie quarterback who threw for another 321 yards and four touchdowns in the postseason clincher.

Has there been a more unlikely playoff team in this city of champions?

OK, besides Tim Tebow’s miracle workers.

On their way to earning a No. 7 seed in the AFC and a spot in the wild card round, the underdog Broncos took the opinions of prognosticators and stuck it where the sun don’t shine, Buffalo.

The Broncos meet the Bills at 11 a.m. Sunday. On brand, Denver opened as an 8.5-point ’dog.

Just how the Denver ’Dogs like it.

Only one team entered this season with a lower win total than Denver’s 5.5 — New England. The Patriots fired their coach on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Broncos jogged a victory lap around Empower Field (Nix); tossed their 290 pounds into the stands in a real leap of faith (Malcolm Roach); planted a Broncos flag in one end zone to mark the end of the NFL’s second-longest playoff drought (Garett Bolles).

So what if the Chiefs had the No. 1 seed wrapped up and sat Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and a bunch of other cool players? The Broncos had to overcome a $53 million cap hit in order to not have Russell Wilson on the roster.

The Broncos left no doubt, leading 31-0 early in the fourth quarter to start the playoff party.

Only the Jets (15 straight seasons) owned a longer playoff drought than the Broncos (eight). Thank goodness and Nix that streak is over.

Can we all agree to not do it again?

As I boarded a media shuttle to exit Levi’s Stadium after Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7, 2016, I never imagined it would be almost a decade before the Broncos made the playoffs again. Von was in his prime. Aqib was still yanking chains. So what if Peyton Manning retired?

The Broncos would be back.

Until they weren’t.

Other Broncos playoffs teams were fueled by star power, from the “Orange Crush” defense to John Elway to Manning. So how did a roster with a rookie quarterback and a serious salary-cap crunch double its expected win total? Sean Payton, George Paton and the wizards in the front office found a bunch of football nuts who are dang near impossible to crack.

These Broncos were not what people said they were going to be.

Riley Moss is a white cornerback in the NFL. It doesn’t get more underdog than that.

“We weren’t expected to do this. I think it was 5.5 (wins)? We hit 10,” Moss said Sunday.

Ja’Quan McMillian goes 5-foot-nothing and was not drafted out of East Carolina. And if “J-Mac” fights a bear, call Parks and Wildlife to save the bear.

“They limited us, I feel like,” McMillian told me. “We weren’t supposed to win even four or five games. They said we weren’t supposed to be any good. Now we’re here. Yeah, feels good.”

Jaleel McLaughlin once lived out of a car and now pulls into Broncos Park before dawn.

“It motivated us to prove we were a lot better than what everybody said,” McLaughlin said.

The last time the Broncos were in the playoffs, McLaughlin was a 14-year-old kid watching Von Miller take down Cam Newton and his Panthers in Super Bowl 50.

“I was from North Carolina, so of course I was watching Cam,” McLaughlin said Sunday. “But my gosh, that guy, Von Miller, was unbelievable.”

While Payton’s best work so far was drafting Nix, his second-best work was using bulletin-board material to turn the Broncos locker room into a band of believers. How often did Payton remind his players what the world thought of them?

Every one of the Broncos players I talked to Sunday mentioned the win total of 5.5.

“We saw what they were saying at the beginning of the year,” linebacker Cody Barton said. “We didn’t believe all that. We knew what we had.”

If Broncos mania had faded during the long drought, it returned Sunday. One woman dressed as an orange-and-blue hot dog. (I don’t know, either.) One man wore the stripes of an NFL officiating uniform…. complete with a Chiefs logo. Ushers gave the Mile High salute. Beers were had.

Yes, it’s only a playoff spot. But you must forgive the 76,000 in attendance for the confetti of emotions and bear hugs with strangers. It has been so long. It’s been five head coaches long. It’s been so long the Rockies were in the playoffs more recently than the Broncos. It had been 3,255 days since the Broncos last played in a playoff game, and that one was pretty fun… if our aging memories serve.

“It’s kind of funny,” Nix said. “We doubled what a lot of people thought we were going to win.”

If chalk holds, Denver’s road to Super Bowl LIX goes through Buffalo, Kansas City and Baltimore. Yikes.

Ask the Denver ’Dogs, who love a good underdog story, and they’ll have a different answer.

Yes.