Super Bowl week was an excuse for sixth-grade Lloyd Cushenberry to wear his own jersey during his offseason. It wasn’t a coincidence that his little league football team in Carville, Louisiana, wore black and gold.

Cushenberry had relatives in New Orleans. Others in Baton Rouge. The Saints were beloved in every town between them along Interstate 10, including Cushenberry’s. He celebrated in Carville after the Saints won it all in 2010. Sean Payton’s Saints.

“Mardi Gras was a pretty fun time after that,” Cushenberry said, laughing.

Thirteen years later, the coach who brought a championship to Louisiana while Cushenberry was learning to love football is now Cushenberry’s coach in the NFL. On a hot (but not Louisiana-humid) Monday halfway across the country from Carville, Payton approached Cushenberry during Broncos training camp and asked what part of Louisiana the offensive lineman is from. Payton was familiar with the area.

“I have so many memories watching (the Saints) with my family and friends,” Cushenberry told The Post after that exchange. “So it’s cool to be up close and personal with Coach Payton and hear him tell stories about the games I remember watching as a kid.”

And what timing for Payton to come into the 25-year-old center’s orbit: Cushenberry is entering a true prove-it year, the last of his rookie contract while new backup centers nip at his heels, and his mindset is an edict ripped from the pages of his own Saints-inspired career.

“If the winning comes,” he told The Post, “individual stuff will come.”

Denver signed Kyle Fuller and drafted fellow challenger Alex Forsyth in the seventh round. But if the Broncos exceed expectations this fall and rebound from a five-win season? Naturally, Cushenberry would be more likely to keep the starting center job that he has kept a wobbly hold on since 2020. And more likely to get rewarded financially next offseason, which would propel his career forward the same way winning helped establish it in the first place.

In 2019, a former three-star recruit snapped footballs to Joe Burrow on a 15-0 national championship LSU team.

“Going back to college, I never really focused on ‘the draft’ this, ‘the draft’ that. I just focused on winning,” Cushenberry said. “Because at a school like LSU, you win, it’s going to come. And in the league, you win, good things happen. … It’s the same approach here, going into my last year.”

That point has been drilled home by Cushenberry’s new position coach, Zach Strief, who played 12 years for the Saints under Payton. The first day Cushenberry and Strief met, Strief drove home the point that the Broncos’ 2023 will be dependent on the offensive line more than any other position group.

“We are the leaders of the team,” Cushenberry recalled the message being. “We’ve gotta embrace that. Win or lose, it’s going to be our fault. … No matter what, they’re going to point fingers at us.”

If that sounds like a lot of pressure for any player to put on himself before a contract year, Cushenberry doesn’t seem to mind it. Or at least, he has balanced it by trying new things this offseason, both in his training and personal time.

Seeking new conditioning methods to ensure he’s more durable late this season than he felt in past years, Cushenberry took an interest in boxing. He has done sessions in both Colorado and Louisiana. (Is he any good? “No,” he deadpanned. “I have no technique. … Much respect for boxers and UFC fighters, because I was just doing, like, three rounds, one minute, and I was gassed.”)

Then while spending time back home, he and his siblings and their children decided it was time to launch a tradition. “We wanted to start family vacations every year,” he said. “Do some things we’d never done growing up.”

They started with a trip to Orange Beach in Alabama to show Cushenberry’s nieces and nephews a good time.

Meanwhile, the Broncos added help in the trenches. Newly signed offensive linemen Ben Powers and Mike McGlinchey are likely starters. Cushenberry was eager to work with them for the same reason Payton and Strief got him excited. Both have playoff experience, something Cushenberry still lacks.

“They know what it takes to get where we’re trying to get,” he said. “And they came in with that mindset even in the spring. Ready to work. No nonsense. Not really trying to be ‘rah rah’ guys. Just working. I feel like it’s bled into the whole room. … We don’t have to talk. We can be in front of the (offensive line group), but we don’t have to say anything and give speeches all the time, because we know at the end of the day we’re the group that runs this team.”

The side effect of those signings is an increasingly crowded room. Nothing is guaranteed at center. And looming over the 2023 proceedings is how last season ended, with Denver not activating a healthy Cushenberry (groin) from injured reserve in order to activate other players instead. He missed the last nine games.

Cushenberry is discovering motivation from the experience, but not because he interpreted the Broncos’ decision as a personal slight. “It was just unfortunate; we already had so many injuries,” he said. “It wasn’t something that, ‘Oh, they didn’t want me to come off IR.’”

The predicament hit him in the heart, not in the ego. He just missed being able to compete.

“I realized how much I really love this game — really love to play this game,” Cushenberry said.

A joy discovered while watching Sean Payton and the Saints.