Seven long years of Broncos misery has been defined by too many knuckleheads and not enough winners.

Good news: While $87.5 million is a heap of dough for a 28-year-old offensive tackle who’s never been to the Pro Bowl, bringing Mike McGlinchey to Denver was money well spent.

It was an investment in something beyond keeping quarterback Russell Wilson clean in the pocket. McGlinchey, who has made a trip to the Super Bowl on his NFL resume, can teach the Broncos about the mysteries of a winning culture.

What’s the definition?

“You can’t directly define it, but you can certainly feel it,” McGlinchey said Wednesday, after the conclusion of a morning practice at training camp

“It’s an attitude. It’s a mindset. It’s the way you come into work every single day. It’s the way you prepare. It’s the way you respond to adversity. It’s the way you lift your teammates up. It’s all those things, all mixed into one. If you do that at a high level and the best you can every single day, that to me is a winning culture.”

After McGlichey hopped down from the podium in a formal news conference with a media horde obsessing over every Wilson interception or one-handed grab by a young receiver in an August practice, I asked the new offensive lineman what he has observed since signing a five-year contract with the Broncos in March.

“The culture is something that needed to change here,” McGlinchey told me.

For too long, the Broncos have surrendered to defeat too easily.

And you want the definition of a knucklehead? Let’s start with defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike, suspended indefinitely by the NFL for gambling, and now facing criminal charges for allegedly making 32 wagers on Broncos players and games during his rookie season.

Yes, the overwhelming majority of players on the Denver roster care deeply about winning. But they’ve failed to establish the stubborn belief required to endure adversity, with recent doubts born either from the lack of talent in the locker room or the ineptitude of former coach Nathaniel Hackett and his staff.

“Just because you lose a couple games in a row doesn’t mean you’re a losing team,” McGlinchey said. “I’ve been part of teams (in San Francisco) that started a season 9-0 and started 3-5. But we made the playoffs in both cases and went to the championship game in both cases.”

Change is hard and often uncomfortable. New coach Sean Payton has put the team on notice and infused the building with edginess.

“I don’t know if discomfort is the right word. But change certainly needs to be urgent. Urgency is the right word. Everyone on the team needs to feel the urgency in which things need to change,” McGlinchey said.

Culture can’t be changed overnight. But changing the culture can’t wait until tomorrow. Between now and the opening kickoff of the regular season, the everyday process should be more than establishing a mindset that will not only lead to victory against Las Vegas. Denver’s goal should be to blow the hated Raiders off the field.

“I think the guys upstairs believe in the urgency for change as a coaching staff. And they apply the pressure to make sure it happens,” McGlinchey said.

“It’s our job as leaders of this football team to carry out that message from the coaches. It’s not a level of discomfort, but there’s certainly an urgency and buy-in that needs to happen. And if you don’t buy-in, maybe that’s where the discomfort comes in.”

If the Broncos don’t name McGlinchey a captain in his first season with the team, this group of players has more problems than anyone dreamed.

“The NFL season is a long, long haul. Anything can happen, as long as you keep to the process. By sticking to the same messages Sean and the staff are instilling in us now, anything can happen,” McGlinchey said.

“You just got to believe. I think that’s what it is. It’s just a belief you can win.”

A dozen losses and a last-place finish in the AFC West did damage to the psyche of the Broncos in 2022.

“It is tough. (The losing) makes you believe in yourself a little bit less. It’s about having that confidence, having that belief in yourself, the belief in your team and the belief in what we have established as a culture that we can weather any storm, charge through and handle anything that comes our way,” said McGlinchey.

He signed with Denver as a free agent with the full intention of ending this miserable playoff drought. And not one of these years down the road, but now.

“What is our goal?” McGlinchey said. “Our goal is to win, get in the dance and see what happens after that.”

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