Tuckered out from a summer’s day of baseball, roping cows or mischief, a mayonnaise or ketchup sandwich long digested through his slight frame, young Emmanuel would stuff the old T-shirts in his pillow case and lie on the floor with the rest of Josie Sanders’ grandbabies.

Most nights, the movie “8 Seconds” would play from the tape machine. It was about legendary bull-riding champion Lane Frost. Uncle Mircle Sanders, who slept on a couch, was a bull rider.

One time, a bull stepped on Uncle Mircle’s face, and he lost vision in an eye and strength and feeling on his left side.

He didn’t stop riding bulls. Another ride brought about another bull stomping, and this time Uncle Mircle surrendered.

He started wearing a facemask during competitions.

Young Emmanuel is all grown up now, and after every Broncos practice, he can be seen putting in more time working on his receiving skills. Not since Bradley Van Pelt and Tim Tebow has a Broncos player stayed after practice more than Emmanuel Sanders.

Van Pelt and Tebow were athletes stubbornly trapped by a desire to play quarterback, positions they excelled at in college. Sanders works extra even though he’s already a polished, highly skilled NFL receiver, the newcomer in the Broncos’ high-scoring offense after receiving a three-year, $15 million contract.

“I would go back to that cowboy mentality,” said Josh Bryant, Sanders’ first cousin and Southern Methodist roommate who had his own shirt-stuffed pillow case on Grandma’s floor. “A lot of times, we were out there on the ranch, and it was a lot of hard work.

“The thing about Emmanuel — and this has gotten stronger since SMU — he hates not knowing everything. So now that he’s in a new system and he’s not the one that has all the answers? That drives him crazy. If a rookie asks him a question and he doesn’t know the answer, that will eat at him all night.

“When you say he’s staying after practice every day, that makes perfect sense to me.”

Football started tough

In the first football game Sanders played, his team quit at halftime. He was 12, and his uncle Howard Bryant, Josh’s father, had just started from scratch the first youth football team in Bellville, Texas.

There were growing pains. Not only were the Bellville kids hopelessly destroyed in their debut by halftime, “the other team had a girl on it and she was tearing us up,” Josh Bryant recalled. “After that Emmanuel was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to play football.’ “

It was between his freshman and sophomore high school years that Sanders blossomed and football became easier. Bellville’s population has remained about 3,700. Its most notable tradition is the parade of cows. When Sanders earned a football scholarship to SMU, it was viewed as a considerable accomplishment.

Then, after earning his degree in sociology and breaking all the school’s receiving records while playing in June Jones’ run-and-shoot offense, Sanders became a third-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In his rookie season of 2010, Sanders was playing in the Super Bowl and had two early catches.

Then football, and life, suddenly became difficult again.

“The game plan is for me to have a really good game,” Sanders said. “I’m feeling good. I plant on my foot and break it.”

He had surgery the next day. Two months later, tests revealed a stress fracture in his other foot. Ever try to rehab without putting weight on either foot?

“I wind up tearing my knee,” Sanders said. “And the Antonio Brown era came about.”

Selected by the Steelers three rounds later than Sanders in the same 2010 draft, it was Brown who replaced Hines Ward as Ben Roethlisberger’s go-to receiver.

It took Sanders a full year to recover physically, and much longer to get past the emotional loss of Uncle Mircle and his mother, Stephanie, who died in her sleep at 41 in the home where Sanders grew up.

“When she passed away, she was four months away from graduating to become a registered nurse,” Sanders said. “It kind of woke me up to realize that a lot of people walk around on this earth thinking tomorrow is promised. It is not promised. Even in this game, I’ve gone through so many obstacles. You have two broken feet and you’re thinking while you’re sitting out, did I take my last snap? It took a year for me to get back to myself. That whole situation made me realize to take advantage of every day.”

Reason to play outdoors

Josie Sanders had nine kids, and those kids had kids, and on average, 15 of her kin and friends would sleep at her home. There was never a problem with hand-me-downs, and there was enough love to carry Texas. But there were times when three squares meant Ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There were no video games, and all those people under one roof naturally led Emmanuel and Josh to the outdoors.

Sunup to sundown.

“He was like any normal kid,” Josie Sanders said of Emmanuel. “He got in his troubles. But he never got in any criminal trouble. I never knew him to steal. But he did get into mischief. He’d run to me so his mom wouldn’t whup him.”

It was baseball at first as Emmanuel and his cousin played a few years on a traveling select team. Burnout set in, and so did football.

Still, Grandma never saw the NFL coming.

“To me, I thought he was going to go for baseball or basketball,” Josie Sanders said. “I did think he would have a career in one of those sports. But I didn’t think he was big enough for football. When he got in the NFL, I was still thinking: ‘They are going to break this boy in half. He is not going to make it.’ He was just so skinny. But he’s fooling me all the time. He’s proved me wrong.”

A year ago, Sanders bought his grandma a new home. It has a swimming pool, and Thursday night, when Sanders was about to make his preseason debut with the Broncos, she had at least six of her grandbabies and their friends swimming out back.

The home is nicer, but there still are 10 to 15 people sleeping over each night.

“I taught my daughters and my sons, and I teach my grandbabies: If you’re ever going to have anything in life, you have to work for it,” Josie Sanders said. “If you steal you’re going to go to jail. I always told my daughters to be an independent woman. Work for yourselves. All my kids are working. I don’t have one kid that’s not working. I don’t have a grandkid yet who is not working for his own.”

Sanders remains driven. Injuries and deaths of loved ones made 2011 one of the most challenging years in his life. But just as Uncle Mircle kept getting back on a bull throughout his rodeo career, Sanders rebounded and became a starter last season for the Steelers. He took a 67-catch season into free agency, where he was in considerable demand. Returning to Pittsburgh was never a serious option.

“I wanted to try something different,” Sanders said. “Some of these guys come from a college program where they’re used to catching one or two balls and blocking. But for me, I played with June Jones. Once you get a taste of that type of offense, it’s hard to go back to the pro-style offense. Playing football to me is throwing it on fourth-and-1, throwing it on third-and-1. That’s playing football to me. When I became a free agent, I wanted to go to a team that was going to sling the ball around.”

His new quarterback, Peyton Manning, threw for 55 touchdowns and nearly 5,500 yards last season. At Sanders’ introductory news conference in March, he said he was in “receiver’s heaven.”

Many players say they don’t take such a blessing for granted. Sanders proves it every day after practice.

“I didn’t grow up in the best circumstances,” he said. “That’s what made me tick. Wanting to be successful, because I wanted the better things in life.

“I want to go to the Pro Bowl. I feel like I’ve got the talent. I just feel like I need the right system. I’ve got the work ethic. I’ve got the drive. It’s all about being patient and continuing to work hard. I just pray to God that some day a breakthrough will happen. I can’t rush it. And when it happens I’m going to look back on everything and say I went through a lot. I was patient, and it paid off.”

Mike Klis: mklis@denverpost.com or twitter.com/mikeklis