CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Just when the Carolina Panthers thought they could call the tune, the Denver Broncos changed the Key.

How do you rack up an NFL-record 16 one-score wins in a row? How do you go from humbled in Week 1 to 7-2 and leading the AFC West heading into Week 10? Because your players trust each other. Because the coaches trust players. Because the players trust the guys upstairs.

And because Ja’Quan McMillian, bless him, trusts his eyes.

“Bro, what the …?,” McMillian, the Broncos’ criminally underrated nickel back, said to defensive coordinator Vance Joseph on the visiting sideline late in the third quarter of Broncos 26, Panthers 21. “Devon (Key) caught the ball. He caught it.”

With 1:30 to go until the fourth quarter and Carolina up 14-13, Panthers quarterback Bryce Young fired a first-and-goal throw from the 1-yard line to his tight end, Tommy Tremble, in the back of the end zone. Broncos linebacker Justin Strnad was hanging with Tremble, step for step, and the two went down in a heap. In real time, the ball appeared to go off of Tremble’s hand and scrape the ground, where Broncos safety Devon Key picked it up off the carom.

McMillian saw something else.

“It hit off the guy’s hand, it bounced up,” the Broncos defensive back recalled. “Dev caught the ball. Nobody noticed it. So I’m like, ‘He caught the ball, VJ. He caught the ball.'”

The Panthers quickly ran another play — handing it to Chuba Hubbard for no gain — as a red challenge flag flew. NFL replay officials determined Sean Payton’s beanie toss was delivered before the snap, voiding the handoff and putting the replay crew to work.

“And then (Joseph) went to Sean to throw the flag,” McMillian told me later, “and I got nervous, because I didn’t think it counted because they ran the play.”

While play had stopped, McMillian cornered Key.

“Dev,” No. 29 said, “ please tell me you caught it, because I just made them challenge.”

“Yeah,” Key replied. “I caught it.”

Sure did. As Tremble reached for the pass, his extension kept the ball from ever hitting the ground. Key secured it with the tips of his fingers, Franco Harris-style. The Broncos had, somehow, kept this a 1-point game. Interception. Touchback. Denver ball.

“I was going to actually turn and try to run, but then they blew it dead,” Key explained to me at his locker stall at Bank of America Stadium. “And so I (was going to) move on to the next play because I can’t worry about the other one. And then they run the next play. And all of a sudden everybody kind of stops. I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t know what happened.'”

McMillian happened.

“I mean, shout out to J-Mac. J-Mac gets the assist for that one,” Key laughed.

“It worked out for the better,” McMillian added. “That’s when the game changed around. (They were) probably about to run it in (for a touchdown),” McMillian said. (Only now it’s a) turnover, I think we went down and scored, and that flipped the whole game.”

How do you rack up an NFL-record 16 one-score wins in a row? Because, a few days after Election Night, your traveling fans turn the Queen City from Process Blue to Orange and Blue. Because even when the home quarterback is churning through your beat-up, injury-stretched secondary like it’s a tub of pimento cheese, your guys never stop swinging. Young (276 passing yards, three passing TDs) had the Panthers driving again, up 14-13, and was about to land a killing blow when the worm turned.

The Carolina signal-caller turned daylight on the short side of the field into a 13-yard scramble to the Denver 41 with 4:26 left in the third stanza. His 15-yard toss to Darren Waller got the rock to the Denver 12 with 2:21 left, and a Jahdae Barron pass-interference call two snaps later brought the ball to the Broncos’ 1.

On first-and-goal, the football gods reached down and lent a hand. Key and McMillian did the rest.

It was at least a six-point swing — and a Panthers touchdown taken off the board. Bo Nix didn’t waste it.

The Broncos QB got the ball back and completed six of his next seven pass attempts. Two were especially timely — a 12-yard toss to Sutton on third-and-6 to the Carolina 19, and a 6-yard throw to convert another third-and-6, this time to Troy Franklin, to the home 9-yard line. On the next play, rookie running back Jonah Coleman went wide right, trucked a Panthers defender, and rambled into the end zone to put the Broncos up, 19-14. The visitors marched 80 yards on 14 plays to grab the ebbing momentum right back.

So, basically, Fourth-Quarter Broncos turned up late in the third quarter instead. Better early than never.

“At some point,” Payton said later, “guys are going to have to play and step up.”

Game ball to you, Mr. Key. For never giving up. For never giving in.

“I kind of just left (the game ball) real low on the ground,” Payton recalled, “and he caught it.”

And ain’t it something how many different hands in this secondary have reached over and helped carry the flag these last six weeks?

Kris Abrams-Draine in relief of Pat Surtain II along the boundary. JL Skinner with the massive stuff of Kenneth Walker III on the mother of all goal-line stands last weekend. Now Key with a fingertip save from out of nowhere.

“The depth that we have in the room, it (doesn’t) matter,” McMillian said. “(There are) no drop-offs. Guys step in, and we trust them to come in and perform like everybody else. So it just shows the depth and the work that we put in.”

How do you rack up an NFL-record 16 one-score wins in a row?

“Well, when it keeps happening, I think our league… it kind of is what it is,” Payton reflected. “When those things keep falling your way, that’s not by accident.”

Even if it’s hanging in there by finger. Or two.

“I wouldn’t say it’s luck,” Key said.

This? This is something else.

Something ethereal. Something magical. It’s one thing to be in the right place at the right time. It’s another to do something with that moment once it traps you in the light.

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