Mike McGlinchey and Zach Allen, two of Sean Payton’s signees, offer playoff lessons

DENVER — Mike McGlinchey and Zach Allen knew that success could transpire in Denver when they joined the Broncos as two of the team’s key free-agent signings in Sean Payton’s first offseason.

Sure, they might have had to squint to see the possibilities well over the horizon at the time. After all, the Broncos of March 2023 had just finished a 5-12 campaign that was their sixth-consecutive losing season. They didn’t have a first-round pick in that year’s draft, having sent it to Seattle as part of the trade for Russell Wilson.

But they bought in. And even though they’d never played for Sean Payton, they came in part of the vision the coach had.

“I picked the organization, I picked the head coach,” McGlinchey said. “I’m very fortunate to be here, very fortunate that they wanted me to come here. And it’s everything you ever asked for, right?

“You want to be a part of something special, and this is what we’re starting to build.”

Now, he’s back in the postseason for the third time. His first two trips came with the San Francisco 49ers, in the 2019 and 2022 seasons. He missed the 2021 playoff run due to a torn quadriceps.

In the mind of McGlinchey, the key to success is simple.

“Well, I think it’s about keeping things the same, right? You want to do the things that got you here, the things that brought you to this point, stay in the same process, don’t try to do too much just because it’s the playoffs,” he said. “You gotta be who you are and not let the pressure of the moment take over.

“I think it’s just a matter of competing as hard as you can, being on task and doing your job. It’s as simple as that. … The people that deal with the pressure the best and execute through all of that are the teams that make noise in the playoffs.”

McGlinchey knows all about that. In both of his postseason runs, the 49ers won a pair of games before falling; in the 2019 postseason, they advanced to Super Bowl LIV before succumbing to Kansas City.

Allen returns to the playoffs from a different perspective. While McGlinchey has six postseason games and two deep runs on his CV, Allen has just a single playoff game from his time with the Arizona Cardinals — a 34-11 beatdown three years ago to the Los Angeles Rams, who were en route to a Super Bowl LVI win.

“I want to right that wrong,” he said.

That defeat sits with Allen to this day.

“Yeah, it definitely does,” he said. “It’s just — your career’s in session, so you just never know when you’re going to get back. There’s just so many things and if your season’s over, you got to start back at zero. You don’t start back at 10 wins, in the playoffs, redux. You gotta start back at zero.

“And it’s not like the NHL or NBA, where you have a two-month offseason. Your offseason is seven, eight months. You’re sitting with it.”

One of Allen’s tasks this week is to convey to the multitude of Broncos without playoff experience that Sunday’s game in Buffalo is going to hit different. That it will come against a postseason-tested team that has been to the playoffs for five-straight years and six of the last seven adds to the challenge.

“We got guys that realize you can’t take this moment for granted,” Allen said. “And it’s our job that — [with] some younger guys, to kind of just teach them that message because they just don’t know.”

That can be an advantage in some situations. But at others, the lack of knowledge can result in the kind of drubbing that Allen experienced 36 months ago.

“The playoffs, it’s a different speed,” Allen said. “If you’ve been in it, it’s different.”

And as much as seasoned vets like Allen and McGlinchey convey this to the “young and hungry” players who surround them, those players won’t quite know for certain until Sunday afternoon.