In pursuit of a championship, Broncos coach Sean Payton has plucked an idea from the brain of the Mastermind.

What does every great artist say? Steal from the best.

Payton is an obsessive student of football history with an encyclopedic knowledge of plays that have altered the outcome of big games over the past 30 years.

What he has done now is more sublime. I can’t definitively tell you what inspired Payton, but he has flipped through the annals of Broncos history and taken a page from Mike Shanahan’s script.

We will see quarterback Bo Nix take snaps on an NFL field Friday night for the first time since he limped off Empower Field with a broken ankle that wrecked the Broncos’ championship dreams.

When Nix bounces to his feet after the first real hit he takes from the Green Bay Packers in a fake football game, it will allow everyone in Broncos Country to breathe a sigh of relief.

Relax. His wheels are fine. Nix isn’t damaged china. He’s a QB who loves contact.

So what you need to watch most intently isn’t his health, or even if he can make a home-run throw to new receiver Jaylen Waddle during his dozen or so snaps of work on a hot August night in our dusty old cowtown.

Instead, focus on how Nix interacts with new offensive coordinator Davis Webb on the sideline between series.

While many play callers like to be an eye in the sky, setting the chess pieces of an offense in motion from a booth high atop the stadium, Webb is a former NFL quarterback who likes to be down in the trenches with his play sheet in hand.

“I’ve always loved it as a quarterback when the play caller is on the sideline with me,” Nix recently said, after walking off the practice fields at the team’s posh new Dove Valley facility.

Why does Nix feel so comfortable with Webb standing alongside him?

It’s the eye contact, the shared fist pumps after a touchdown throw or the calm to be restored after carelessly flicking a pick-six.

What a quarterback needs as much as brilliant X’s and O’s from his O.C. is a guy whom he can trust as his brother in arms.

And that might just be the No. 1 reason why Payton taking a step back in his mentorship of Nix and surrendering his play-calling duties to Webb was championship savvy.

I can’t guarantee Webb in the ear of Nix will transform the Broncos into the highest-octane, highest-scoring offense in the NFL, which is the third-year quarterback’s bodacious goal for the Broncos in 2026.

It took running back Terrell Davis to take some of the load off John Elway for the greatest player in franchise history to finally win a championship in the twilight of his Hall of Fame playing career.

But almost as essential to the Broncos hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after both the 1997 and ’98 seasons was offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak serving as both a bridge and a buffer between Elway and Shanahan.

As intense on the sideline as the bulging vein in his neck, Shanahan never lost his cool in a game but definitely ran hot.

As you might have noticed, whether he was unloading with both barrels on Russell Wilson or in heated debate with Nix, the first sign of autumn in Colorado is when Payton begins to clench his jaw and tighten the screws on everyone in the Broncos’ football operation.

At age 26, having already won 25 times at the NFL level, Nix is all grown up. He doesn’t need a taskmaster in the earpiece of his helmet chewing on his every move.

After the Broncos dropped 27 points on Atlanta last weekend in Webb’s debut as the new full-time offensive coordinator, the small detail that struck me as carrying big weight was quarterback Jarrett Stidham predicting Webb will live long and prosper as a play caller in this league, not just because he knows how to hit a defense where it hurts, but how Webb deftly plays the emotional and mental strings of his quarterback between snaps and during downtime between series.

If all goes well, Webb will not only serve as a buffer between Nix and Payton but also as the bridge to help Nix find his own way to becoming a top 10 quarterback in the league.

This is going to sound like a small thing. But please file it away.

One of the things Nix likes best with Webb in his ear is how a 31-year-old former NFL quarterback can relate. How Webb has the comedic timing to cut the tension of a violent game. How Webb, guiding a colleague who has the toughest job in sports, knows the trick of keeping it lighthearted in the heat of a football battle.

And you know what?

With Payton standing nearby, wearing a knowing smile, Nix and Webb just might laugh all the way to the Super Bowl.