For most of October, Sean Payton harped on his offense’s need to improve on third down. The Broncos weren’t just struggling, they were flat-out bad. Denver didn’t convert better than 36% of its attempts in any of its first seven games and entered Week 8 at No. 31 in the NFL, floating around a 26% conversion rate. Over the past three weeks, though, the money down has been an entirely different story for Payton’s offense. In a win against Carolina (11 of 17) and losses at Baltimore (6 of 14) and Kansas City (7 of 13), the Broncos offense was far from perfect, but really good on third down. The team over that stretch has converted 24 of 44 chances for a rate of 54.5%. “It’s probably a handful of things,” Payton said Friday.