If Tim Patrick is surprising you, then you don’t know Tim Patrick.

In Patrick, who returned from injured reserve with a burst via four catches for 48 yards against Minnesota, the Broncos believe they have a complementary threat to No. 1 wideout Courtland Sutton.

The 6-foot-4 receivers have near identical builds, and Patrick’s brief impressions during the last couple of seasons have provided glimpses of game-breaking ability similar to Sutton’s.

“Tim Patrick is a dawg, and we all understand that,” tailback Phillip Lindsay said. “He brings a lot of great energy to our team and it’s something that we needed. He brings another element to help Courtland out. Having him back, defenses are still going to have to double Courtland and that leaves Tim (alone in coverage).

“And one thing about Tim is he doesn’t back down to anything. There are a lot of people that play football, but Tim plays it passionately. A lot of people aren’t cut from how Tim is, the same cloth he’s cut from.”

The cloth Lindsay is alluding to is one defined by adversity, and Patrick’s ability to overcome it. The broken hand he suffered Week 1 in Oakland, which cost Patrick eight games, was a molehill compared to the mountains he scaled in order to earn this prime NFL opportunity in the first place.

Patrick wasn’t recruited out of University City High School in San Diego, despite excelling in football and basketball. So he took his football dreams to a nearby junior college, Grossmont, but family drama and academic issues nearly washed out his career.

Having already overcome an abnormal childhood — his dad was incarcerated for 15 years and his mom spent time in jail, too, with his grandmother taking on a main parental role — Patrick headed back home from Grossmont and worked at a thrift store.

Those trials taught Patrick patience. He refocused himself on his schoolwork, getting eligible to play and earning all-conference honors at Grossmont in 2013 while leading the team with 53 receptions for 964 yards and eight touchdowns.

“I came to understand some things are not meant to happen right now,” Patrick said. “The biggest thing about me is I work hard but I’m also patient. I knew if I just kept grinding, what I wanted would start to come. It’s been that way since I was little.”

That was the case when Patrick made the jump to Division I in 2014. He headed to Utah as a walk-on and earned a scholarship after his first practice. Then, as he was working on a breakout season, he suffered a gruesome compound leg fracture against Oregon that sidelined him for a year-and-a-half.

Even when Patrick did return in 2016 to turn in a monster senior season for the Utes, NFL scouts weren’t ready to buy in. He didn’t get invited to the combine and went undrafted. Both Baltimore and San Francisco cut him in 2017 before he landed in Denver, where he spent the final 11 games of the season the practice squad.

“I never doubted (my path),” Patrick said. “I knew my talents, and through everywhere I’ve been and everything I’ve been through, I always played against the best and I always held my own. Certain things got in the way of people seeing my talents. In the NFL it was being undrafted, it was getting cut a couple times.”

But Patrick isn’t flying under the radar any longer. Even with his limited experience — he has 27 receptions for 392 yards and one touchdown in 18 total games — a quick review of Patrick’s game film doesn’t lie.

The Broncos just might have another Sutton on their hands — even Sutton agrees.

“We were very sad and disappointed about the injury that happened to (Patrick) at the beginning of the season because we knew what he could bring to the table,” Sutton said. “To get him back and for him to go into Minnesota and do what he did, we all expected it, and we’ll continue to expect it for the rest of the season.”