The cruel truth behind the Broncos’ stunning last-minute victory against the Raiders on Sunday is the heroics of one player bailed out the mistakes of another in the game’s most critical juncture.

Denver trailed 19-17 with 22 seconds left and was nearing field goal range with no timeouts left. Quarterback Case Keenum fired a dart to wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, who was cutting toward the boundary just past the first-down marker. But the football bounced off Thomas’ hands. One play later Broncos wide receiver Tim Patrick gained 26 yards on a catch-and-run to set up Brandon McManus game-winning field goal.

“That’s big for our team,” Thomas said. “We have guys (like Patrick) who work so hard and now it’s paying off.”

His mindset after that drop?

“Make another play and try to win the game, that’s it,” Thomas said Thursday. “The main thing is just doing my job the best I can to help my squad out. That’s my main goal.”

There is no questioning his leadership role as one of only a handful of players left from the 2015 Super Bowl title team. Thomas also remains an integral part of Denver’s offense through two games. No Broncos wide receiver has been targeted more often (21). But the other Thomas statistics don’t lie, either.

Of those 21 Keenum-to-Thomas targets, Thomas has managed to haul in just 11 for a catch-rate of 52.4 percent — the second-lowest among NFL players with at least 20 targets this season (Detroit’s Golden Tate bottoms the list at 50 percent), according to STATS. Five of the 10 incomplete passes to Thomas, per Denver Post stat tracking, were the result of Thomas drops (two versus Seattle and three against Oakland).

Few NFL receivers performed to the same level of excellent consistency between 2012-’16 as Thomas with five consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and four Pro Bowl appearances. But Thomas, now 30, is in the midst of his ninth NFL season searching for answers to his consistency as Denver prepares for the Ravens on Sunday.

Keenum’s first two targets to Thomas against Seattle fell incomplete. Against the Raiders, the two didn’t connect until the third series. That’s a problem, per Broncos’ coach Vance Joseph, who said: “(Thomas) is OK. It’s our job to get him going early and to get him his confidence early. When guys go through a whole half and have one attempt or two attempts, that’s tough for receivers. If he has his first attempt and he drops it or it’s a bad ball, that’s a mind war. It’s our job to get him going early. It’s his job to play with confidence, and he will.”

However, offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave prefers a much simpler approach.

“We’re just trying to get everybody the ball,” Musgrave said. “We don’t want to start worrying about one guy. We have to let the ball find everybody in the system.”

It’s Zach Azzanni’s job as receivers coach to identify and fix shortcomings within his unit’s production. For players such as Thomas, with career totals of 119 games played and 58 receiving touchdowns, the answer to an early slump is all about patience.

“Demaryius is old enough to know what his attitude and mindset need to be for him to be successful,” Azzanni told The Denver Post. “I’ll give Demaryius this: He didn’t have his best day, but man, he was great on the sidelines and he did a lot of things on Sunday that a lot of people don’t see to help us. He didn’t have his greatest day on the field. He’ll be fine and he’ll bounce back. He came in Monday with a great attitude, with a bounce in his step, ready to get better and not hanging his head. Related Articles 🔊 Broncos podcast: Previewing Denver’s must-win Week 3 home showdown against Tampa Bay

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“A true pro and I appreciate that about him.”

One example of the Thomas impact outside a stat sheet was captured by the team’s digital film crew against the Raiders. Thomas rallied teammates with a rousing pep talk on the bench as the Broncos erased a 9-point fourth quarter deficit. At one point he shouted, “Put your foot on the gas and let’s go.”

“I think it’s more spur of the moment,” Thomas said back in the locker room Thursday. “We were coming off a drive where we went down and scored and before that we weren’t able to get anything clicking. We did that in the second half.”