ENGLEWOOD – Super Bowl LX is four weeks from Sunday. With that in mind, Broncos coach Sean Payton had a message for his team on Friday.

After Denver clinched the No. 1 playoff seed in the AFC last Sunday, players were off for four days before returning to practice at Broncos Park. The Broncos have a bye in the wild-card round and will play next Saturday or Sunday at home in the divisional round.

“I just finished telling the team, ‘Hey, we have four weeks. Right at this stage, right now, we have a month. … Let’s make the most of it,’’’ Payton said after the practice.

The Broncos, who will play the lowest remaining AFC seed after the wild-card round, won’t know their initial playoff foe until Sunday at the earliest. If either No. 6 Buffalo wins at No. 3 Jacksonville on Sunday afternoon or the No. 7 Los Angeles Chargers win at No. 2 New England on Sunday night, the Broncos will know that day. If both the Bills and Chargers lose, Denver will play the winner of Monday night’s game with No. 5 Houston at No. 4 Pittsburgh.

If either the Bills or Chargers win Sunday, the Broncos (14-3) would play either next Saturday or Sunday. If both the Bills and Chargers lose, they would play next Sunday.

Payton knows very well the importance of having a No. 1 seed, which means a team needs just two wins at home to make the Super Bowl. He cracked that such seeds “aren’t like car wash coupons, they’re hard.”

Tackle Mike McGlinchey has experienced being a No. 1 seed before. When he was in his second season with the San Francisco 49ers in 2019, the team had the top NFC seed and made it to Super Bowl LIV, where they lost 31-20 to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Six years later, McGlinchey has been letting his teammates know of the urgency at hand.

“These opportunities come rarely and you have to appreciate the opportunity that it is and the gravity of it and the importance of the urgency to get your job done because you never know when you’re going to come back and if you are,’’ McGlinchey said. “Opportunities like this don’t come around very often. It’s our job to take advantage of it.”

To do that, Denver (14-3) likely will need to play better on offense. The Broncos weren’t exactly a juggernaut to close the season on that side of the ball.

In a 20-13 win at Kansas City on Dec. 25, they had just 303 yards of total offense. In last Sunday’s 19-3 victory over the Chargers, they had just 240. Both those outmanned foes used backup quarterbacks while having a number of notable players out.

“We’re going to have to play better,’’ Payton said. “I’d love to say that we pulled a bunch back (due to the opposition), but the tape from last week wasn’t really good offensively. It wasn’t great at Kansas City either. It was good enough to win that game. We have to be sharper as we get to these next few games here. We’re going to see good teams that can score, and we’re going to see (good) defenses.”

Payton said, “Our third-down numbers bother me” on “each side of the ball.” Speaking for the offense, McGlinchey agreed. Against the Chargers, the Broncos didn’t have an offensive touchdown, getting a 45-yard interception return for a score by Ja’Quan McMillian and four field goals by Wil Lutz.

“The obvious thing is executing in the red zone,’’ McGlinchey said. “You got to turn field goals into touchdowns and that’s how you win games, especially as you go through the playoffs. Got to be better on third down and got to be better on third down by being better on first and second down.”

There is much less for the Broncos to worry about on defense after finishing No. 2 in the league in total defense. Payton expects to have back for the playoffs linebacker Dre Greenlaw, who missed the final two games of the regular season with a hamstring injury, and defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers, who sat out against the Chargers with a hip injury.

Payton said Greenlaw is “getting there.” Franklin-Myers missed practice Friday due to his wife Rita having a baby.

On offense, Payton was asked about running back J.K. Dobbins, who has been out since suffering a foot injury in Week 10 and having surgery. While Payton had said before that Dobbins’ season is not necessarily over, he wouldn’t speculate much on that Friday but did say he is “getting close.”

All in all, Payton was pleased with the rest the Broncos got during the week. He was glad to have some time off himself.

“Every time we have a break like this, I get sick,’’ Payton said. “So I feel like I’ve gotten over that, but for three days you sleep and you recover.”

McGlinchey said “it was great to get rest and be able to chill out and enjoy some family time” this week. He said his wife Brooke is expecting a baby in about 2 ½ weeks.

Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II called the time off beneficial.

“It’s been pretty cool,’’ he said. “Pretty relaxing. I had time to just kick my feet up. … It’s a bonus to rest and have guys that are nicked up a little bit get their bodies back for this postseason. It’s very beneficial in that way.” 

The Broncos will spend the weekend watching playoff games. Payton said plenty of work will have been done on breaking down the four possible foes before they take the field.

Among the possible foes, the Broncos split with the Chargers this season, which included a 23-20 road loss on Sept. 21, and won 18-15 at Houston on Nov. 2. They last played Buffalo in a wild-card game last January, losing 31-7 on the road, and last played Pittsburgh at home in Week 2 of 2024, losing 13-6.

“You play great teams in the playoffs and that’s the bottom line,’’ McGlinchey said. “It doesn’t matter who we play.”

What matters most for the Broncos is whether they still will be playing in four weeks.