DENVER — As fascinated as the world is about the Tim Tebow story, the path of Broncos second-year receiver Demaryius Thomas makes Tebow’s tale look cliché by comparison.

As Thomas was scoring his 80-yard touchdown catch-and-run in overtime Sunday night, leaving the Steelers as rearview mirror road kill and sending the Broncos to Saturday’s divisional playoff game in New England, few watching had any idea of the burden he has been carrying since his youth.

Thomas wanted to run with that game-winning ball right through the stadium tunnel all the way down to Florida to deliver it to his mother, Katina Smith, who dutifully calls him before every game.

From the Federal Correctional Institute of Tallahassee, Fla.

Smith is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base. Thomas’ grandmother, Minnie Pearl Thomas, is serving two life sentences in the same facility, with a chance for parole after 40 years. Smith received a longer sentence because she declined a plea bargain deal to testify against the grandmother.

Both women were arrested on March 15, 1999, when police burst into Thomas’ Georgia home.

“They busted into the house when we were getting ready to go to school,’’ Thomas recalled yesterday in an exclusive interview with The Post. “The only thing I remember is my mother asking them if she could walk us to the bus for the last time.’’

Smith, in a prison interview with the Denver Post last year, recalled, “I hugged them and said, ‘I’ll see you when I get back,’ and told them, ‘I love you.’ But I never came back.”

Thomas, who was 9 years old at the time of the arrests and had seen people coming and going from their home after using drugs, said he had a premonition dream a few weeks before the police break-in and warned his mother.

“I told my mother it feels like something is going on and something bad is about to happen,’’ Thomas recalled. “That was the scariest time.’’

Times didn’t get much better for Thomas, who was shuttled from place to place to live, staying in four different homes before landing with an uncle, James Brown, the man who helped save and shape his life.

Brown, a minister at his local Baptist church in Georgia, took Thomas in and gave him direction. Thomas, who was born on Christmas Day 1987, eventually became an usher in the church.

If there is any silver lining in seeing his mother and grandmother locked up in prison for a long time, their mistakes helped shape Thomas, who realized very quickly that he wanted no part of that life.

“He grew up in the church,’’ Brown told The Post by phone yesterday. “He’s got something on the inside that was instilled in him at a young age and that helped through a lot of his adversity. That’s the reason he’s at peace with himself, because he knows Christ. He may not profess about knowing Christ like Tebow does, but he is a believer.’’

In addition to Thomas’ mother calling him from prison before every game, Brown calls him and they pray together over the phone before each game.

It is a show of his resolve and faith that Thomas does not harbor anger toward his mother for what she put him through. A weaker man might never forgive and denounce family forever.

Yet Thomas considers family so important in his life that he has a tattoo with the word “Family” on the inside of his right biceps and “First” on the inside of the left.

He said he spoke to his grandmother on Monday for the first time in months.

Now Thomas waits for his mother to get out of prison. He said she could get out as early as two years from now.

“I’m looking forward to it,’’ he said. “I’m ready for her to come to one of my games. She’s never been to one of my games through high school, college or the pros.’’