Tim Patrick gets it. When the Broncos’ wide receiver was asked if all this fantasy football love on Twitter had gone to his head, Patrick leaned in and recalled this exchange from a few weeks back, when his family nagged about ordering his No. 81 Denver jersey in bulk:

“I’m like, ‘I’ve got to make sure I make a name for myself before you get my jersey,’” the undrafted wideout out of the University of Utah explained. “Everybody wants to get the stuff and come out. I’m like, ‘Hey, guys, let me just make a name for myself. I don’t want you guys to get a jersey and then I’m not there anymore.’ I don’t live in the moment.”

And with good reason.

This is Patrick’s third NFL team in a year-and-a-half. The Baltimore Ravens cut him after three months. The San Francisco 49ers lopped him after five weeks. Wideouts without a giant salary cap number attached to their name are a dime a dozen, as expendable as old light bulbs.

“You definitely appreciate it, especially when you get cut and you don’t have any of it (anymore),” Patrick said of his 96 combined yards receiving and rushing at San Francisco last Sunday. “I didn’t have any facilities, I didn’t have any coaching, no free food.

“That’s when you’d have to buy stuff for yourself, but then you’re like, ‘Why would I buy that stuff? As soon as I get on a team, I’ll get it for free.’ So then you don’t buy the stuff and you don’t put the right stuff in your body. You don’t train the same way. You can’t do the right recovery. So it sucks being at home, honestly.”

It’s Week 15. The Broncos (6-7) are running out of chances to make up for the sins of previous Sundays. But No. 81 doesn’t see the tape at the end of the marathon so much as a chance — precious, rare, beautiful — to pile up a glorious stretch of game tape before the curtain closes.

“I’m taking it one day at a time,” Patrick said. “Just continuing to build my resume.”

***

Tim Patrick gets it. With Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders on the shelf and Courtland Sutton soldiering through quad issues, the next man up is likely the next man in – again. Week 15’s dance partner, the Cleveland Browns, trot out a starting secondary Saturday night that measures 5-foot-11, 5-11, 5-9 and 5-11, hashmark to hashmark. Patrick is 6-foot-5. Sometimes, the mismatches write themselves.

“He likes to be physical,” Broncos wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni said of Patrick, who was originally signed to Denver’s practice squad last October only to be released soon after and then re-signed again. “It’s kind of a part of his game that makes him, him. He’s a big guy and he plays big. I always say, ‘We got big guys to play big. If we wanted little guys, we’d get little guys.’ So he’s come a long way in his release techniques and his route techniques. He had some inconsistencies catching the ball in college, but he’s cleared that up.”

One of Patrick’s old college coaches had a word for that: Streetball. K.O. Kealaluhi, the former BYU receiver, was No. 81’s position coach at Grossmont (Calif.) Community College, one of the first teachers to offer the San Diego native a taste of the finer points of playing wideout.

“He said (it was a) streetball mentality because I’m wild,” noted Patrick, who finished November with Pro Football Focus’ fifth-highest special-teams performance grade (85.1). “And not in respect of how I’m speaking, talking. But the way I get in and out of my breaks. My release is not normal. It’s a lot different. He said, ‘Some people, you can’t coach them, you’ve just got to let them do what they do.’ He made me put confidence in myself by letting me play the way I wanted to play.”

The Broncos added to that confidence by showing patience, a willingness to smooth out the kid’s rougher technical edges. Day by day. Rep after rep.

“I see him over at the JUGS (machine) as we’re talking,” Azzanni said, nodding to Patrick grinding on the practice fields in the distance. “That’s him. There’s a reason why he’s catching the ball better, because he’s working at it every day. That kind of stuff right there. One of his edges is his effort. If he can put his effort into all the drills work and all the technique work, then he’s going to get better a lot faster than people that don’t put that effort in.”

And when preparation and opportunity intersect, good things can happen. With Sanders out and Sutton hurting, Patrick stepped into the breach for quarterback Case Keenum in Santa Clara last weekend, logging 10 targets, seven catches and 85 receiving yards while appearing on 64 out of the Broncos’ 74 offensive snaps.

“Making plays consistently throughout the whole game and playing in the whole game, there’s nothing like it,” Patrick said. “It was definitely worth the wait.”

***

Tim Patrick gets it. During his freshman year at Grossmont, things got so goofy at home he moved back to help out and took a job at a local thrift store. At Utah, he suffered a compound fracture to his left leg so brutal the bone broke through the skin. America’s newest fantasy waiver darling has two bachelor degrees — one in human development and family studies and another in sociology. Kealaluhi taught him swagger. Former Broncos receiver Demaryius Thomas taught him to sweat the details.

“DT does so much stuff to get his body prepared to play,” Patrick explained “A guy like that, you see him have so much confidence, no matter what’s going on, it makes you want to do what he does. And that’s what I bring every week, (the thought that) I’m the best receiver on the field. And I truly believe that. That’s why every time I go into a game, it feels like nobody can guard me and I can make a play at any moment.”

And he knows at any moment, it could all go up in smoke, too. In May 2017, Patrick signed with Baltimore as an undrafted free agent, and the family loaded up on assorted purple Ravens gear. The franchise waived him at the end of that July.

“That’s where I learned it from,” Patrick said. “Everybody had Ravens stuff, and look — it happened. So now I’m waiting.”

Through Christmas, at least. Patrick has made a list, checked it twice. Naughty or nice, if you’re in the close family, you’re probably getting an orange and blue 81 jersey.

“I’m probably just going to end up giving them to everybody,” Patrick laughed. “But I’m still hesitant. Because in this business, you never know.”