Michael Penix Jr. spent the evening hours of New Year’s Day putting on a show in guiding the Washington Huskies to the national-championship game. He dazzled with an array of throws — some bullets, some perfectly-placed arcs.

And he looked like the kind of quarterback who could be on the Broncos’ radar when the NFL Draft arrives in April.

Flourishing in the pocket, the Huskies quarterback spent most of the Sugar Bowl — which also serves as the College Football Playoff semifinal — carving up the Texas defense. He completed 29 of 38 passes for 430 yards in Washington’s 37-31 win.

Penix hit a brief spot of bother early in the fourth quarter when the Longhorns cranked up the pressure after he completed 11-straight passes to open the second half. But he quickly adapted and returned to his metronomic groove.

The former Indiana quarterback’s poise, accuracy and work in the pocket all seem to check boxes of attributes one would want to see from a Sean Payton-coached passer.

And while Payton expressed faith in Week 17 starter Jarrett Stidham after his first Broncos start on Sunday, there appears to be little question that the Broncos will go quarterback shopping in the coming months after things broke down with Russell Wilson.

The nature of moving on from Wilson — an $85-million dead money hit that could be spread over two seasons — puts the Broncos in the position of potentially economizing at the quarterback spot. That allows them to squeeze an entire roster’s worth of players under the salary cap.

That’s where drafting a quarterback comes into play. A rookie quarterback would bring bumps and a learning curve, to be certain. It would also provide four years of cost control. This is because even first-round picks have salaries that are a low fraction of their mid-career passing brethren who are established starters.

That’s something to keep in mind if the Broncos take him.

Barring injury, Broncos brass should get a close look at Michael Penix Jr. during Senior Bowl week. The all-star game’s executive director, Jim Nagy, implied on Twitter/X that the the Heisman Trophy runner-up would be on hand for the proceedings, which typically attract most of the NFL’s key decision-makers for practices and interviews that serve as key evaluation point sin the pre-draft process.

But for Penix, the key moment will be the NFL Scouting Combine — and the medical evaluations. With two torn ACLs and two shoulder injuries in his college career — one of which was to his throwing shoulder — questions about over whether Penix can physically hold up over the long haul. Those queries likely prevent him from joining the conversation at the top of the draft, which remains focused on USC’s Caleb Williams and North Carolina’s Drake Maye. LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jayden Daniels, also appears poised to go in the first five-to-seven picks.

The Broncos appear set to pick somewhere between pick 14 and 18. And Penix could be in the conversation in that range — along with Oregon’s Bo Nix and perhaps Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, whose Wolverines will face Penix and the Huskies in the national-championship game in Houston on Jan. 8.