They’re the “Browncos,” mirror images of the meh-but-successful NFL team that makes Tom Brady want to cover his eyes at cringe-worthy football.

“There’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL,” Handsome Tom lamented to  Stephen A. Smith earlier this week. “I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past.”

The Browncos don’t care. They’re trying to win games, not score style points.

In a league where scoring is down and boredom is up, Denver and Cleveland have figured out it’s better to be gritty than pretty in the Sluggo World where the NFL currently resides.

“Play great defense. Run the ball well. Win the turnover battle,” Denver offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey said Wednesday. “I think that’s been the recipe for us. It’s been the recipe for them.”

With scoring in decline across the league for the fourth season in a row, the Browncos are either what’s wrong with football or on the leading edge of the bully ball that has come back in vogue.

The Browns and Broncos are combining for 44.3 points per game this season. That’s just a tick above the league average of 43.3 per tilt in 2023 — a season currently on pace to produce the least offensive fireworks since 2009.

While Brady laments the lack of skill he sees throughout the league, you would think Mr. Deflategate might admire the way Cleveland and Denver win by taking the air out of the football. By leaning on defense, pounding the rock and milking the clock, the Broncos have recovered from a wretched September to win four straight games, while the Browns appear headed for the playoffs for only the second time since 2002.

Although maybe not funny ha-ha to Brady, the funny thing is Denver and Cleveland didn’t exactly plan it this way.

As you might recall, another thing the Browncos have in common is an unhealthy obsession with the quarterback position. In 2022, Denver and Cleveland shipped out a boatload of future draft picks to acquire Russell Wilson and Deshaun Watson, then offered contracts on the crazy side of $200 million before either man won a game for his new team.

When Watson and Wilson proved to be what-the-bleep bad investments, the Browncos combined to win a dozen games a year ago. The good news? Those 12 combined victories is a count already matched by Cleveland and Denver this season, despite a season-ending shoulder injury to Watson and Wilson morphing from Mr. Unlimited into Mr. Dinky, playing conservative, complementary football.

So who cares if the Browncos are more nap-inducing than a belly full of tryptophan as the sun drifts off to sleep on Thanksgiving afternoon?

The winning streak that saved Denver from another lost season has been built on goading foes into mistakes. While there has been some luck involved in creating all those turnovers, let’s also give coach Sean Payton and Wilson credit for burying their egos, moving away from the more aggressive style of football they might prefer and adopting a low-risk approach that gives them a far better shot to win.

Can Denver get all the way to the playoffs with a formula of more takeaways than touchdowns in any given game?

Is this rope-a-dope tactic truly sustainable?

“It’s always sustainable,” Payton claimed after eking out a one-point victory against Minnesota despite his team being plus-3 in turnovers.

Brady will hate me for this prediction:

The outcome of Sunday’s game between the Browncos in Empower Field at Mile High will most likely be determined by how successful  McGlinchey can be at limiting the havoc of Cleveland defensive end Myles Garrett, who leads the league with 13 sacks, and how much Denver’s defense can fluster rookie quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

Know what I think might really be irking Brady?

Look around: With Joe Burrow hurt and Patrick Mahomes looking less than superhuman, Josh Allen committing knucklehead mistakes and Jalen Hurts’ trademark play the Brotherly Shove, 2023 ain’t exactly shaping up to be the year of the quarterback.

Maybe these NFL rock fights put Brady to sleep.

Or maybe it was about time football tweaked the old power structure. Out here in Orange Crush Country, many of us are thrilled that on any given Sunday, defense rules.

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