What’s that old saying? Timing is everything?

It certainly looks like it could be for Mike McCoy and Jamaal Charles.

In early May the Denver Broncos signed Charles to a one-year contract worth just under $1 million, which came with the chance for Charles to more than quadruple that number based on incentives. It was a savvy, low-risk, high-reward signing for Broncos GM John Elway.

In Charles, Denver adds a player who has amassed nearly 10,000 yards from scrimmage in his career and averages a jaw-dropping 5.45 yards per carry out of the backfield.

They’ve also added a player who has missed 24 of the last 32 regular season games he was supposed to play and is trying to put a second major knee injury behind him. Not to mention, he’ll turn 31 years old in December – over the proverbial hill for NFL running backs.

Enter new/old offensive coordinator Mike McCoy, now charged with doing something he’s done once in Denver already: Rejuvenate the career of a 30-year-old running back while simultaneously pumping vigor into a running game.

McCoy returned to the Denver coaching staff this January after a four-year stint as head coach of the Chargers. He was previously the OC in the Mile High City from 2009 to 2012, helping lead the Broncos to a pair of division titles in his final two seasons.

After two years under middling head coach Josh McDaniels to begin his first tenure in Denver, McCoy was reunited with his former head coach from Carolina, John Fox, and began engineering an offensive turnaround spurred by a power running game, led by an aging back with an injury history.

With a pair of quarterbacks who created more on-field questions than answers in Kyle Orton and Tim Tebow, McCoy turned to the running back duo of Knowshon Moreno and Willis McGahee. At 30 years old, there was doubt as to whether or not McGahee had anything left in the tank.

After posting three 1,000-yard seasons in his first four years in the league – he was two-for three with Buffalo – McGahee suffered a variety of minor injuries in year five, which opened the door for Ray Rice after his first year in Baltimore. Over the next two years, McGahee’s role increasingly diminished, culminating in a career low in touches in 2010 and his release from the Ravens. Despite rushing for over 8,600 yards to that point, McGahee entered the 2011 season still carrying the stigma of the player who had blown out his ACL, MCL and PCL in a bowl game to end his college career.

Charles was just as big a question mark heading into Broncos training camp, and he carried that doubt through the first two games of the preseason when head coach Vance Joseph was not yet ready to let Charles show he was back healthy. In one half of play against the Green Bay Packers, Charles showed that he is – albeit with a very small sample size.

As Denver opens its 2017 season on Monday night, McCoy finds himself in familiar territory.

His quarterback – in 2017 as in 2011 – is considered more a game manager than a player who can take over an win a game with his arm. Like Kyle Orton before him, Trevor Siemian proved in a few instances that he’s capable of putting up significant stats. However, those numbers will be buoyed by a strong running game. As former NFL coach Brian Billick said on Mile High Sports AM 1340 | FM 104.7 on Friday, “The effectiveness of your quarterback, for Denver, to me is about the running game.”

McCoy’s feature back – in 2017 as it was in 2011 – is no guarantee. C.J. Anderson needed only half a season as the primary ball carrier in 2014 to earn a Pro Bowl nomination. Motivation and fitness stymied his start to 2015, but he finished strong to help Denver win a Super Bowl. An injury cut short a 2016 campaign that was off to a promising start. Six years prior, Knowshon Moreno – the 12th overall pick in 2009 – brought just two 100-yard rushing performances into his third season in the league. Denver’s primary ball carrier, then and now, certainly doesn’t have a lock on the job entering the season.

In his back pocket – again in 2017 just like 2011 – McCoy has a potential ace hiding with a veteran free-agent running back the rest of the league is questioning. McGahee needed just one strong performance in Week 2 to wrestle the starting job away from Moreno. His 101 yards against the Bengals produced the first of seven 100-yard games in a 1,199-yard season that earned his second and final Pro Bowl nomination. Still with plenty to prove, Charles would love nothing more than to take the starting job from Anderson and turn it into his fifth Pro Bowl nod.

“My whole life, I’ve always felt like I’m going to the be the man. That is what I want to come up in here. If I’m not going to be the man, why am I here?” Charles asked the media back in early June.

There are of course some vastly different circumstances in 2017 from 2011, not the least of which is the fact that an 8-8 record most certainly won’t secure an AFC West title this year. Still, the timing of McCoy’s return coupled with the addition of Charles seems almost too perfect.