Cut and fill.

“That’s what civil engineering used to say,” said Rick Dennison as he trudged off the Broncos practice field recently.

As some 200 men saunter off the field behind him, the Broncos’ offensive coordinator takes a seat on a metal bench at the team headquarters. Shortly, he’ll have to give his weekly address to local reporters and whoever else has infiltrated practice to learn more about Denver’s offense without Peyton Manning (How different will this year’s offense be, coach?) and its offensive line that already has been rattled by injuries (How concerned are you, coach?) and its young running backs (Will they run more, coach?) and, oh yes, the monumental task of picking a starting quarterback.

“I try to answer it and just move on,” Dennison said. “I try to get to my next job. That’s one of the things that engineering teaches you, is to be time efficient. So you’re always trying to keep busy.”

But for 15 minutes he sits. And he reflects on an interesting start to another season.

“Peaks and valleys,” he said. “Hopefully we’ve got more peaks and we level out the valleys. Cut and fill. The grind is the grind. But it’s a necessary thing that has to get done so that we can get to a point where we can go out and play games and be successful.”

Dennison, or “Rico” as he’s known, is a man of few words. The former Colorado State tight end and Broncos linebacker owns bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering but is a football player and coach through and through. An Alex Gibbs protégé, Dennison has spent the better part of the past three decades working alongside coach Gary Kubiak, from Denver to Houston to Baltimore and back again, often hiding on the sideline or in the booth as they together employ an offense they know, perhaps, better than any staff in professional football.

Despite being the longest-tenured Broncos player/coach on staff (25 years!), Dennison is a mystery, often described as a quiet genius. But while his tone is soft and his words carefully selected, his voice is always heard within the Broncos.

For good reason.

TEACHER WITH MILE HIGH ROOTS

A return to Colorado always was in the plans, even if it was penciled in for a date to-be-determined.

“I’m a Colorado guy,” said Dennison, who grew up in Fort Collins a Rams fan. “We always spent a lot of summers here, we have family here. I’ll probably stay here whenever I’m done, whenever that is. I was going to come back whether I’m working or retired.”

When Kubiak was hired as Broncos head coach in January 2015, it seemed inevitable he would bring Dennison with him.

“Rico is a very loyal person, and he’s extremely loyal to the Denver Broncos, I can tell you that,” Kubiak said. “And he’s extremely bright — a great teacher, understands how to teach players. That’s what he is by trade. He’s a teacher.”

The son of a former University of Montana president, Dennison believed he was done with football when he retired as a player in 1990. But after three years coaching basketball and football and teaching mathematics at the prestigious Suffield Academy prep school in Connecticut, he returned to the Broncos in 1995 as an offensive assistant, beginning a coaching career that has spanned special teams, the offensive line, quarterbacks and multiple stints as an offensive coordinator.

“The one thing that made Rico a good football coach is he played for a long time as a linebacker so he understands defense,” said Tyler Polumbus, a former Broncos offensive tackle who began (2008-10) and ended (2015) his career with Dennison as his coach. “He coached on the defensive side and then he coached on the offensive side, and I always thought that coaches that have experience on both sides make the best coaches because they truly understand the ins and outs and what’s going to work against another team.”

The résumé, the big names (14 Pro Bowlers coached), and stats belie the fact that few people know Dennison and he’s OK with that. He thinks first, teaches second and responds to questions later. Sort of. Kind of.

Dennison picks his moments and vocabulary as carefully as he does his plays.

“He’s a thinker. He’s a math guy,” said Ring of Fame center Tom Nalen, who finished his career with Dennison after starting it with zone-blocking guru Alex Gibbs and his affinity for four-letter words. “He wouldn’t just fly off the handle. If he were to yell at us, there was a reason for it. I mean, I spent a whole season and I didn’t talk to the man. He yelled and I took it personally and I did not talk to him for about four months, despite him being three feet from me in the meeting room.”

Tight end Virgil Green is going into only his second year with Dennison as his offensive coordinator, but already has picked up as much.

“I’ve probably have only heard him curse three or four times,” Green said. “You can tell something’s always on his mind. He’s always thinking about something.”

ENGINEERING BRONCOS’ FUTURE

Dennison said he took to engineering because he likes concepts. He likes problems that have black-and-white answers and he likes structures that need building.

The irony, of course, is that football is about the furtherest thing from being cut-and-dry.

“Not at all. There are many answers,” Dennison said. “And there are many answers in engineering, too, it’s just the solutions are a little bit more definitive. Here there are a lot of variables that happen. It’s a bit different than a couple of steel structures and some blocks.”

Which, in a weird twist, makes him a good fit for the job and a perfect wingman to Kubiak. While few know how they come to their conclusions, they seem to think alike,

Remember Emmanuel Sanders’ 75-yard touchdown play — the longest of his career — at Cleveland last October that put Denver ahead with just less than eight minutes remaining?

“It’s something Kubiak and Rico discussed via headsets on the sideline that we were going to come back after that with a play that had Emmanuel on a go route, and we talked about alerting Emmanuel,” Manning explained after the Broncos’ overtime victory. “That’s sort of the communication. You’ve got a good look to him and we can take a shot. We had a look and got him in a bump-and-run coverage with a single safety. We got the ball over in the corner, and anytime you can hit it in stride and you get him a chance to separate from the safety and the corner, he’s as good as anybody in the league.”

Remember C.J. Anderson’s game-winning overtime touchdown run against the Patriots in Denver last November? Another back-and-forth decision between Kubiak and his trusted coordinator.

“Rick was an offensive line coach by trade, but he’s exceptional in understanding what defenses are trying to do to you, how to protect what to get down in the run game and how to counter,” Kubiak said. “Rico’s been going against the coaches, with the likes of Belichick and people like that his whole career.”

Remember the overall ups-and-downs last season in trying to blend Kubiak’s zone system with Manning’s strengths as a pocket passer? And now this offseason, with a trio of quarterbacks of varying experience and knowledge all vying for the starting job? Dennison is in the thick of it

“He’s my voice down there,” Kubiak said. “As a head coach, you can’t be there all the time. He and I have been together for so long, he knows how to teach something, he knows how I may say something, so he’s also echoing those things.”

Quietly, the teacher at heart and coach by trade is engineering the next era in Broncos history, calculating and reshaping the path one step at a time.

Cut and fill.

Rick Dennison, 58

Offensive coordinator

— Longest-tenured Broncos player/coach at 25 years. Nine seasons as linebacker (1982-90) and 16 on coaching staff (1995-2009, 2015-present)

— Started as offensive assistant, moved to special teams, offensive line and then offensive coordinator.

— Previously quarterbacks coach in Baltimore (2014) and offensive coordinator in Houston (2010-13)

–Helped Ravens QB Joe Flacco reach career highs in passing yards (3,986 yards) and touchdowns (27) in ’14.

— Has coached 14 different Pro Bowl players.

— Appeared in six Super Bowls with Broncos. Lost three as a player (XXI, XXII, XXIV) and won three as a coach (XXXII, XXXIII, 50).

— Entered NFL as college free agent out of Colorado State.

— Played in 128 games for 514 tackles (316 solo), 6.5 sacks, four interceptions, 10 pass breakups, six forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries.

— Second-team Academic All-American at CSU as senior.

— Received bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from CSU in 1979. Received master’s in same field from CSU in ’82.

— Attended Rocky Mountain High in Fort Collins; lettered in football, basketball and baseball.