How Drew Lock took the Broncos to infinity and beyond on Sunday

HOUSTON — Moments after the scoreboard clock displayed three zeroes to confirm the Broncos’ 38-24 win Sunday afternoon, Drew Lock jogged into the Broncos locker room with a smile on his face, the game ball in one hand and the fondest dreams of millions of Broncos fans resting on his shoulders.

Lock turned a corner from the tunnel in the bowels of the NRG Stadium and strode into the loudest roar heard this day — a day the Broncos hope will be long remembered, and the Texans hope will be soon forgotten.

The whoops of his teammates could be heard in the hallway, toward the Texans’ locker room and perhaps all the way to the outposts of the Broncos’ AFC West rivals.

A long pass from the Johnson Space Center, the Broncos’ own Apollo rocket guided by their “Buzz Lightyear” took the Broncos to infinity and beyond.

After 21 games without scoring more than 24 points, a 38-point outburst — including 31 by the offense, which scored on its first five possessions — was warp drive for an offense that had rarely found its way past impulse power for the last three years.

And the Broncos had Lock to thank.

Sunday, Lock went where no rookie quarterback had gone before. According to pro-football-reference.com, Lock became the first rookie since 1950 to throw for over 300 yards, complete more than 75.0 percent of his attempts and have at least three touchdown passes in a single game.

Thirty-one points was infinity.

Making them happen as Lock did? That’s beyond.

“Incredible,” said outside linebacker Von Miller. “That f—ing guy’s a rock star.”

Rock stars break the rules. Rock stars take the book that has been written on a team, tear it apart, douse it in lighter fluid and strike a match.

An offense that can’t score once it’s off the script? An offense that can’t adjust to what the defense throws its way?

Burn it all and then stomp on the ashes.

High above the field, a former Heisman Trophy winner and local legend in Houston watched the proceedings. Andre Ware was once the quarterback in whom a franchise placed its hopes, as a first-round pick of the Detroit Lions in 1990. It didn’t work out for Ware; six starts and six years later, he was out of the league. Now he’s the analyst for the Texans’ radio network.

The Broncos were en route to their third score in their first five possessions when Ware heaved an errant pass into the southeast Texas airwaves:

“I don’t like the body language of Drew Lock right now,’ Ware told the audience. “It’s exuding way too much confidence.”

Huh.

“Way too much confidence” is exactly what the Broncos have been missing.

Since Peyton Manning’s retirement, the Broncos have furiously shuffled through the file cabinet of quarterbacks, searching for what they had lost. Trevor Siemian. Paxton Lynch. Brock Osweiler. Case Keenum. Joe Flacco. Brandon Allen. All had their shots. None were the answer.

Some could occasionally produce a big game. But none brought the fire, the swagger, the élan to the huddle that the Broncos had not possessed since Manning held aloft the Vince Lombardi Trophy on Feb. 7, 2016.

By any name — Broncos Country, Broncos Nation, “Broncoland” — everyone who gave a damn about the orange and blue ached for the guy who could look at his teammates in the huddle and say, “I’m gonna get you there.” It yearned for the man who could take an afternoon, months or even years of failure and say, “This [excrement] stops right here, right now,” then go out and do it.

We don’t yet know if Lock is that guy.

But at this moment we know that he might be.

And on a day that saw first- or second-year players account for all but 32 of the Broncos’ rushing (90) and receiving (309) yards, we know that the Broncos have a core of offensive skill-position talent that could blossom together, building chemistry along the way.

The Texans concentrated on covering the Broncos’ WR1, holding Courtland Sutton to 34 yards on five receptions. But that was fine, because rookie right end Noah Fant took advantage for a 113-yard, four-catch day that made him the first Broncos tight end with two 100-yard games in a single season since Julius Thomas in 2013.

Some days, Phillip Lindsay will be the world-beater. He wasn’t Sunday, but he did contribute a touchdown. Others, it’ll be Sutton. Sunday, it was Fant. Their emergence will help Lock, and symbiotically, Lock’s growth will help them.

“You know, with us being young, we’ve got a lot of young pieces, in every position on our team. It’s cool to be able to see the progress each week,” Sutton said. “It’s awesome to know that we have so many young pieces that can continue to grow and we can hopefully build a dynasty here.”

Confident words. To some, perhaps “way too much” confidence.

But confidence is built by performance. No matter what the Broncos do the next three weeks, they can point to a destruction of a potential playoff team that had just beaten the Patriots a week earlier and say, “We’ve done this before. We can do it again.”

From the shreds of years of lousy offense, the Broncos now have something they didn’t possess before the last two weeks.

It’s not hope.

It’s confidence.

“Way too much” of it? Perhaps.

But the joy Lock’s teammates and Broncos fans felt as he walked from the field with the game ball tucked in his arm showed what that confidence can create.