LONDON — It’s the best decision the Broncos never made.

Instead of having the NFL’s top defensive player on their side, they could be stuck with a bust who’s about to get run out of the Big Apple.

Denver would not be home to the Super Bowl contender coach Sean Payton likes to brag about without cornerback Pat Surtain II wearing No. 2 for the orange and blue.

And shudder to think: Instead of Surtain, the Broncos could’ve wasted their first-round pick in 2021 on Justin Fields, a quarterback that doesn’t look like he’s going to make it in New York … or anywhere in the whole league, for that matter.

With their careers headed in decisively different directions, Surtain and Fields will cross paths when the red-hot, up-and-coming Broncos meet the winless, down-and-out Jets in merry old England on Sunday.

But their football stories have been intertwined since Fields and Surtain were teenagers.

“I remember him from back in high school … at the Nike Opening (football camp) out in Oregon, where they showcase the top players,” Surtain told me Wednesday, after the Broncos practiced at the heavily secured and immaculately manicured outpost where Tottenham Hotspur Football Club trains on the regular.

Fields and Surtain have been hyped much of their young lives.

But not all five-star prospects are created equal. And the shine is not guaranteed to last.

Ever since they met at Nike Headquarters, however, Surtain developed a habit of leaving Fields in his shadow.

With Surtain celebrated as the league’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year and the Jets being lambasted for the folly of signing Fields to a two-year, $40 million contract, it seems ludicrous now that a knucklehead like me was ever upset the Broncos passed on a quarterback who handles the football every offensive snap to take a cornerback who rarely sees the rock thrown in his direction.

Of course, hindsight not only has the benefit of being 20/20, it’s almost never wrong.

But it took the eagle eye, not to mention some big brassy conviction, for George Paton to select Surtain with the ninth pick in the NFL draft when all of Broncos Country was clamoring for a quarterback.

On the morning of April 29 back in 2021, Paton was hours away from conducting his first draft as general manager of the Broncos. His job was to reconstruct a team spinning its wheels in the mud of NFL irrelevancy, coming off a 5-12 record with Drew Lock, better at rapping on the bench than reading defenses on the field.

On that spring day, Paton huddled with coach Vic Fangio at Broncos headquarters, then contacted scouts one-by-one to reveal his draft plan: If Surtain was still on the board when Denver picked ninth in the opening round, the lanky cornerback was going to be his man.

Four years ago, Fields would’ve been the sexier selection for a team that had been throwing head coaches and quarterbacks in the dumpster as fast as John Elway could pick them.

Instead, Paton went with a gut instinct fed by firsthand experience.

A full two decades prior to 2021, as the newly hired director of pro personnel for the Miami Dolphins, Paton was impressed on a daily basis by the savviness and commitment of a Pro Bowl cornerback named Pat Surtain.

And only a few years later, while Paton was still on the job in Miami, he got well acquainted with a no-nonsense coach named Nick Saban.

When a chip off the Surtain block grew up to be a star cornerback for Saban on an Alabama team that went 13-0 and won the national championship during that pandemic restrictions-plagued football season of 2020, Paton instinctively knew what prospect would rise to the top of his draft board before he binged hours of scouting video on college prospects.

He cheered when the 2021 draft opened with seven consecutive offensive players selected, then breathed a huge sigh of relief when Carolina took South Carolina cornerback Jaycee Horn at No. 8.

Paton, however, took plenty of grief by selecting Surtain ninth overall, especially when he labeled him a safe pick, while critics screamed for the Broncos to roll the dice on Fields, who went No. 11 overall to Chicago.

Giving Fields his flowers, Surtain called him a quarterback who’s not only capable of slinging the ball but also can “run damn near all over the field.”

What Surtain didn’t mention without my prompting, however, was the score when he shared the field with Fields with the national championship at stake, during what proved to be the final college game for both ballyhooed players.

Alabama 52, Ohio State 24.

“We contained him pretty well,” Surtain recalled.

Long before me, Paton recognized what’s now obvious to everyone: Surtain was born to be a champ.

While it might be unfair and cruel to label Fields a chump, he’s being called worse by frustrated Jets fans.

At age 25, Surtain is headed straight up a glorious path toward the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Only a year older than Surtain, with unsuccessful stops in Chicago and Pittsburgh behind him, Fields seems to be on the road to NFL ruin.