With 3:52 remaining in the third quarter of the Denver Broncos’ game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, Denver punted for its sixth time in a row. Nearly 20 minutes remained in the game, but the Broncos seemed out of life.

Even after J.K. Dobbins ran the ball in for a touchdown with 13:11 remaining, it felt like more than a one-score game. It wasn’t until tight end Evan Engram’s 11-yard receiving touchdown that the game truly felt winnable.

Then, coach Sean Payton made one of the riskiest calls of the season. Instead of tying up the game, Payton kept the offense on the field for the two-point conversion despite being able to tie the game with a point-after attempt. With seven and a half minutes left, the play wouldn’t have even guaranteed a win.

With this, though, the move symbolized something bigger for the team. Denver converted the play, stopped Philadelphia on the next drive, scored a field goal and stopped an Eagles Hail Mary attempt. If that two-point attempt wasn’t converted, the Broncos may not have left with a win.

Payton clearly believes this team can contend for a Super Bowl, and if the team plays like it did in the fourth quarter, it can beat any team in the league. This was one of the Broncos’ biggest wins in years, but that doesn’t mean the team was perfect against the Eagles.

The issue so far this season is that not every fourth quarter has looked like this.

By the end of the game, everything was worth celebrating, but the feeling from the first three quarters is still lingering, as well. To be Super Bowl champions, a team must be nearly perfect and sustain a high level of play for at least three games, likely four, during a playoff run.

The Broncos consistently have competed with good teams, but a couple of disastrous collapses led up to Sunday’s big win. In Week 2, a missed field goal and a dumb penalty gave the Indianapolis Colts the victory. In Week 3, Denver choked a fourth-quarter lead and lost to the Los Angeles Chargers by a field goal.

The silver lining, though, is that the Broncos hadn’t trailed in the fourth quarter of any game until Sunday’s win over the Eagles. The bad news is that the team has yet to play four quarters of good football against a worthy opponent. While Sunday’s inconsistency is confusing, the team succeeded in a few replicable areas.

One of the most interesting points of the game was how the Broncos’ stellar pass rush would stack up with the Eagles’ stout offensive line. In the first half, Denver didn’t get as much pressure, but as the game went on, defensive coordinator Vance Joseph found ways to get into the backfield and get after quarterback Jalen Hurts.

Philadelphia's 3-and-13 attempt with 12 minutes left, for example, showed what Joseph was throwing at the Eagles’ offense. Joseph lined seven players up across the line and had three drop back into coverage from the interior of the line. That left three players running at the left side of the line, and sending Ja’Quan McMillian from the slot ultimately got the sack. Hurts didn’t know how many people were trying to sack him or where they were coming from. That ended the Philadelphia drive, and Denver took the lead on the next possession.

The offense also took tremendous strides by the end of the game. Quarterback Bo Nix wasn’t playing terribly, but we did see more examples of Nix overthrowing a deep threat. The most egregious such case came on a great design from Payton and the offense that gave Trent Sherfield Jr. a step. But Nix missed Sherfield Jr. for what would have been a touchdown.

By the end of the game, Nix was playing clean football, though. In the fourth quarter, Nix completed nine of 10 passes for 126 passing yards, a touchdown and three scoring drives.

Part of what had him playing at the top of his level was receiver Courtland Sutton’s play. As the game went on, Nix went to his go-to target much more often. Sutton ended the day with eight catches for 99 yards, but the timeliness of his production was key.

Sutton had six catches for 81 yards on eight targets against Eagles star corner Quinyon Mitchell; he had three for 64 against Mitchell in the fourth quarter. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Mitchell had never allowed more than two receptions or 49 yards in a game previously in his career.

Offensively and defensively, Denver relied on its best players to bring the game back, and if the Broncos can manage to see all those pieces clicking at the same time for full games at a time, there isn’t a team the Broncos can’t beat.

While some of Payton’s situational decision-making this year has been controversial, his play-calling has been great. Now, the team just needs to clean up the product.

Nix needs to pass the ball more consistently, and the team as a whole needs to stop shooting itself in the foot. The Broncos are tied for the second-most penalties against, 43, and are second in penalty yards against them, 411.

Those are the kind of problems Super Bowl contenders don’t face. While Denver is not a true contender yet, it can give any team a good fight, and if the Broncos become a more disciplined, consistent team, there’s a path to the top of the AFC, and even maybe the league.