There’s a moment of beautiful clarity before the snap when it happens.

A Broncos special teams ace takes one glance at the blocker he’s drawn on kick protection, a player he’s watched over and over and over on film, knows his every mechanical weakness, and it’s as though linebacker Joe Jones and other block-happy Broncos can see into the future.

“You know who is going to block you, who is going to get the ball and where the ball is going,” Jones said. “It’s pretty straightforward. See who the better athlete is and who wants it more.”

Through Week 12 of the NFL season, it’s advantage: Denver

The Broncos (5-6) enter Sunday’s game in Cincinnati (5-6) leading the league with four blocked kicks — two field goals (Justin Simmons), one punt (Simmons) and one extra point (linebacker Shaquil Barrett) — and their success is a culmination of extreme attention to detail.

Coach Vance Joseph lauded first-year special teams coordinator Tom McMahon, a former longtime Colts assistant, as “the reason why we win a lot of games. He helps me a lot on game management and he’s a very, very good teacher.” Executing blocked kicks starts with watching opponent tape to find one thing:

“You need one person on the opposite team to make a mistake and have bad discipline,” Jones said.

Denver then works to exploit it in practice through consistent repetitions; assigning scout team players the same weakness identified on film and making him pay in a controlled setting. The Broncos even drill hand placement for blocks by tossing soccer balls into the air as players charge from angles with arms extended. It allows eyes to lock on target and anticipate deflection without the risk of hand injury.

“The big thing is that you have to separate the group,” McMahon said. “You can’t go full contact, naturally, and it’s big-contact play. What we do is we separate the field-goal block unit from the field-goal unit on Wednesdays. We go against what we call ‘the dummies’ and we actually go full speed against them and try to execute the timing, because that’s what it is.”

It paid off in Week 3 at Baltimore as Jones received a clean release from the line of scrimmage, dove with both hands out, blocked a punt and Denver recovered at the Ravens’ 6-yard line. Jones explained: “If I know this guy is blocking me and tends to go to my outside shoulder, I can easily slip inside of him and rip through. But it’s all different depending on what you’re looking for and what technique you’re trying to use.”

Against the Raiders and Steelers, McMahon identified an athletic mismatch the Broncos were bound to win every time on field-goal block with Simmons’ 40-inch vertical leap. When an opposing guard next to the long snapper is smaller in stature or tends to dip his shoulder in protection, the call arrives for Simmons to leap the space between them, without a running start (per NFL rules), to gain a full step across the line of scrimmage just as the ball is snapped.

Simmons never made that leap once back at Boston College. He’s since mastered it in the NFL.

“We talk about blocking the ball with one hand if you’re not at the point of attack,” Simmons said. “When I went to go block that kick against the Steelers, I felt my foot get caught up on one of the lineman so I felt like I was going to be short and not long enough with both hands. When you extend with one hand, you’re longer and you’ll be able to get higher or father out.

“I just shot my one hand knowing I was already in the flight line of where he’s going to have to kick it. Just nicked my hand.”