“He’s gettin’ ready, baby!”

While No. 30 in white stretched, rocking his helmet from side to side, a chorus of orange in row 20 leaned over and nudged Troy Lindsay playfully.

“He’s gettin’ ready, baby!’

“He’s gettin’ ready!”

To that, Dad just smiled.

As Phillip Lindsay ran onto Empower Field on Thursday night, a familiar name in unfamiliar Indianapolis Colts blue, Section 122 sat up a little higher in its collective seats.

When the hometown kid, the former Broncos Pro Bowl back and star with the CU Buffs and Denver South, started his night with a 6-yard carry, that same section — Broncos and Colts faithful in unison — roared with approval.

Phil Lindsay, cult hero. Phil Lindsay, stadium uniter. The one thing friends and strangers could agree on a Thursday night where the weather was pristine and the offenses were not: Man, did No. 30 get a raw deal here.

“He’s gonna do it, isn’t he?” another Broncos fan said, shaking his head with a smirk that straddled the line between pride and disbelief. “Phil’s gonna go off.”

Dad smiled again.

“To come back and the way it’s happened,” Troy Lindsay told me as his son’s old team (the Broncos) kicked off against his son’s new one (the Colts) on Thursday Night Football. “It’s kind of cool.”

Kind of?

Call Disney Plus. Tag Netflix. This is Hollywood stuff. Troy’s son picked up 41 yards on his first seven touches, good for almost six yards per tote.

For a few series there, it was like No. 30 never left.

“He’s on a journey,” Troy laughed. “And on his journey, there are going to be lots of things that are going on … and he doesn’t stop. So this is just one more page, one more chapter in the book.”

What a read, huh? Knee surgery. Running CU to glory. NFL draft snubs. Broncos. From Pro Bowl to out-of-favor in three seasons. Houston. Miami. Indianapolis. Called up from the practice squad this week to face his hometown team.

“It has been, we kind of say, a divine journey,” Troy continued. “He wants to do well and all that stuff.

“But he also realizes — Phil’s growing up, and you realize what things (in life) will be about. What’s really important and what’s not.”

When you’re on the practice squad, and you’re a veteran running back on said practice squad, you know what’s really important? Survival.

The NFL isn’t kind to its middle class, especially the middle class charged with carrying the ball. There are superstars who get paid (see Wilson, Russell) on one end of the salary cap. On the other end, there’s the young projects/draftees, kids who hope to one day land that lottery ticket.

That squeeze in the middle is even worse when you’re a tailback, a position general managers treat like batteries and club faces. When they wear out, you swap a younger, fresher model in. Lindsay, who turned 28 in July, is on the wrong side of 25.

After 1,000-yard rushing seasons with the Broncos in 2018 and 2019, injuries cut into Lindsay’s effectiveness while a time-share with Melvin Gordon in 2020 cut into his snaps. Broncos general manager George Paton rescinded Lindsay’s tender in March 2021 in what was described as a mutual parting of the ways. Javonte Williams was drafted and Mike Boone signed to try and replace him here.

It’s been fun, at times. Hasn’t been the same.

“No revenge,” Phillip’s uncle Tony Linsday told me Thursday. “You know how Phil is — he’s not after anybody. This (reunion) just happened. It wasn’t a shock or anything, but he was able to come back home.

“For him, (last spring), it was either, ‘Denver, come get me’ or ‘I need to play.’”

The Broncos re-signed Gordon, and the rest is a somewhat, shall we say, checkered history.

“It’s business,” Tony Lindsay said. “Everybody handles their business the way they handle it. You just hope you’re in the right business.”

With the right team. At the right time.

And No. 30, the Denver kid who made good? He had a feeling. A good feeling.

Even a few months back, Phillip Lindsay had one of those feelings. The kind of instincts, the kind of vision, that you can’t teach.

“Mom, by the fourth game (of 2022),” the former Broncos tailback star told his mother, Diane, before the start of the season, “I’ll probably be playing.”

It took five games, but Phil called it. The good ones always do. Another chapter. And a story that’s not over until he says it is.