Following their Super Bowl victory, several players on the Denver Broncos defense said they felt slighted, like underdogs, all season long. That’s what motivated them. They rode that motivation to a world title.

Well, here’s one more slight: That defense, while great, was not one of the best ever.

On Monday, John Elway said, “…they are in the argument to be one of the best ever.”

They may be in the argument, but they’re not atop the list. They’re probably not in the top three. But they can be.

It’s hard to ignore the familiar adage “Figures lie and liars figure” when trying to put the 2015 Denver Broncos defense into historical context.

Watching their games, and how woefully inept the offense looked at times, one had to figure this was one of the best defenses ever.

They won the Super Bowl despite two pitiful offensive records being set, after all. Denver’s 13 consecutive failed third-down conversion attempts were the most in Super Bowl history and their 194 yards of total offense was the least by a winning team in the 50-year history of the game. Were it not for a fourth-quarter strip sack that gave the offense the ball on the four-yard line, they very well could have been the first defense to win a game in which their offense scored no touchdowns. (They actually didn’t even need the touchdown in the end.)

But the actual figures the 2015 Denver Broncos put up, the stats that define not just wins and losses but the nature and scope of those decisions, seemingly makes a liar out of anyone who wants to claim this is one of the top three defenses in NFL history.

Dating back to the 1997 season, Football Outsiders provides “innovative statistics, intelligent analysis” to help make sense of arguments such as this one.

According to FO, the 2015 Denver Broncos were the top defense in the league in two key categories: Yards per drive (24.47) and points per drive (1.43). A curious anomaly to these stats is this: Denver ranked 29th in average starting field position on defense.

That means the Denver defense allowed the fewest points per possession, despite their offense consistently handing them field position among the four worst teams in the league. The three teams below them averaged 5.6 wins this year. No wonder they were underdogs at almost every turn late in the season and in the playoffs.

So in calling Denver’s defense one of the best ever, do other Super Bowl-winning teams with dominant teams stack up similarly?

The 2013 Seahawks, a team Denver knows all to well, ranked third in yards per drive (26.14) and first in points per drive (1.22), but markedly better in the field position game. Russell Wilson and the ‘Hawks offense was No. 6 in the league that year.

They did, however, limit the highest-scoring offense in NFL history to only eight points in the Super Bowl. On eight occasions that year, they held their opponent to 10 points or below. Denver did that half as often.

The 2000 Baltimore Ravens, also considered a standard-bearer for spectacular defenses, was better than both the 2015 Broncos and the 2013 Seahawks by a wide margin in both those FO categories. Their minuscule 0.81 points per drive were tops in the league and their 20.93 yards allowed per drive were second only to Tennessee. The defense both contributed to and benefitted from the No. 2 average line of scrimmage in the league that year.

That remarkable unit had four shutouts and held opponents to 10 points or less a jaw dropping 15 times. They allowed just 23 points in four playoff games total, including just three to Denver in the Wild Card round, three to Oakland in the AFC Championship and seven to the Giants in Super Bowl XXXV.

Sadly, Football Outsiders stats stop with Denver’s first title team, so there’s no quick reference for just how dominating the gold standard of defenses really was. In examining the final benchmark team, traditional box scores will have to do.

The 1985 Chicago Bears lost only one game. They are the last team in NFL history to win 18 games and a Super Bowl (sorry New England).

The 38 points they surrendered in a Week 13 loss at Miami were more than they allowed in their final five games combined, including the playoffs. They gave up 10 points in the first quarter of that Miami game – the same number they gave up in all three playoff games combined that year.

Something tells me there might have been some South Beach shenanigans enjoyed by Jim McMahon and the boys the night before. (You’re welcome, Mercury Morris.) And while the ’85 Dolphins (12-4) were no slouch – they lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, whom Chicago beat 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.

Denver held opponents to 10 or less only four times in 2015. Their closest effort to a shutout was a 17-3 win in San Diego. In the regular season, the Broncos gave up 18.5 points per game, which wasn’t even the best in the league – that belonged to Seattle at 17.3 (with Cincinnati and Kansas City also ahead of Denver). Chicago gave up 12.5 points per game 30 years prior, a full four points better than second-place San Francisco.

Chicago pitched four shutouts that season, including two in the playoffs. In 12 of their 19 games they surrendered 10 points or less. That’s a sterling 63.2 percent of the time in which their offense only had to score a touchdown and two field goals to win, assuming the defense itself didn’t score. And score it did.

In 2015, Denver secured a handful of wins thanks in part to defensive scores, including the Super Bowl. Like those ’85 Bears, Denver had four pick-sixes and one fumble recovered for a touchdown. The Broncos had two fewer safeties, though, netting just one. Their only defensive score in the playoffs was the strip-sack for a touchdown that kick-started Von Miller’s Super Bowl 50 MVP candidacy.

The ’85 Bears defense had one of each of the following in the playoffs: An INT-TD, a scoop-and-score and a safety. They threw in a punt return TD for good measure.

That ’85 Bears team did everything well, make no mistake. Walter Payton was a first-team All-Pro and ran for more than 1,500 yards that year. Chicago scored 28.5 points per game that year, second in the league.

Yes, Denver stopped the highest-scoring offense in the league to win the Super Bowl. But Seattle did that same thing two years ago against the league’s best-ever offense.

Yes, the Broncos held the NFL MVP to only 10 points in the big game. But the 2000 Ravens did that to 75 percent of the teams they played.

Yes, Von Miller created a momentum-changing turnover for a touchdown in the Super Bowl. Reggie Phillips had one that put his team up by 34 points. Henry Waechter had a safety to seal the game by 36.

The 2015 Denver defense is no doubt the greatest in Broncos history, but the figures just don’t add up when it comes to being in the top three of all-time.

The curious thing about all those other defenses, though? None of them went on to win the following Super Bowl.

With serious questions at quarterback and a slew of free agents coming due, Vegas figures they have only the sixth-best odds to win next year’s Super Bowl.

They do, however, love being the underdog. Go out and win Super Bowl LI and the Denver defense will make liars out of us yet.