Rahim Moore can sit and watch film of the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense on his iPad, and talk with a reporter to his right, all at the same time. Try chewing on that while walking away. “Sorry, but I’ve got to multitask,” Moore says. “You’re cutting into my film time.”

This may be difficult to believe, but Moore, a fourth-year NFL safety who made two interceptions in the Broncos’ season-opening win a week ago, may be just as life-possessed with football as Peyton Manning.

Yes, Manning was all but born into the NFL. Moore started running around a football field when he was a 4-year-old water boy for his older brother Shaft’s Pop Warner team. The younger brother started putting on his own pads in his South Central Los Angeles Pop Warner League when he was 7.

He didn’t just play the game. The hyperactive kid studied it.

“When Rahim was a little boy, 7 or 8 years old, he would sit with his coach and watch film for hours,” said Moore’s mom, Nowana.

In a hallway at Broncos headquarters, Moore is watching film now.

“You want to see this play right here? This is a play they’re good at,” he says. “Alex Smith is always making plays. You can never count him out.”

Smith, who quarterbacks the Chiefs, is executing one of coach Andy Reid’s patented plays: the misdirection, play-action bootleg pass.

Know what film study does? It helps a safety break a half second quicker on a ball tipped in the air. When the Indianapolis Colts’ Andrew Luck forced a pass to tight end Dwayne Allen down the seam last Sunday, it wasn’t the first time Moore saw that play.

When cornerback Aqib Talib deflected the ball, Moore caught it just inches off the ground.

Later, when a Luck pass clanked high off Coby Fleener’s hands as the tight end was running a crossing route, Moore was in position — and had the athletic, change-of-direction quickness to shift from coming up on the tackle to making a lateral dive for the interception.

“If you’re in the right position and you’re going hard, then good things happen,” said Broncos defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio. “That’s really what it was. In both cases he was where he was supposed to be. He was breaking the way he was supposed to be breaking and aggressively going after the ball.

Being benched “was like retiring”

On occasion, Moore has looked wistfully at the city he’s played for going on four seasons. It’s not like Denver is exempt from gang problems, but it’s nothing like the dangerous neighborhood surrounding his Dorsey High School.

Moore was never close to joining a gang, but he did have close friends who did.

“If it got to the point where they were going to do something they weren’t supposed to do, I was going to the grass,” he said.

The gangs were street. Going to the grass was a metaphor for not hanging on the street. Going to the grass meant working out, doing homework, practicing, watching game film.

Going to the grass.

“If I had a choice, I would love for my mom and my dad to both be married and live in Lone Tree, or Highlands Ranch, or live in Cherry Creek,” Moore said. “I would love that. But that’s not the plan God had for me.”

South Central Los Angeles was what Nowana and her three children made of it. A single mother who worked 25 years in the banking business, Nowana would get up at 6 a.m., drop off Rasheed (Shaft), now 31; Rahim, 24; and DuRaisha (NaeNae), 19, who is in her second year at Arizona State; at school and then head to the bank.

“It was tough sometimes,” Nowana said. “It was also rewarding. They had birthday parties every year. We did family functions. I loved on them. I took them to school, we went to church, I whipped their butts, I raised them, I loved them. And you do it until they get of age and take the baton and move on to be productive in their own lives.”

After Moore led the nation with 10 interceptions as a sophomore at UCLA, he showed up the next year in New York for the 2011 NFL draft believing he would go in the first round. Instead he wasn’t selected until the second day, in the second round.

“I was disappointed,” he said. “But looking back, I’m happy I went in the second round. I was disappointed because I felt like I did everything I could to be drafted at that level. But who cares? In the NFL, you either make plays or you don’t. It doesn’t matter what round you are drafted or how much money you’re making. Are you’re making plays and are you helping your team win?”

He started his first five games as a rookie, but the Broncos’ coaching staff determined he wasn’t ready and benched him, pretty much for the rest of the season.

“It was like retiring,” Moore said. “They took the game away from me. Looking back, it was good for me. I disagreed with it. But at the same time, Coach (John) Fox said it would better me. It did.”

It helped to have a sideline view of veterans Brian Dawkins and Champ Bailey. Moore also saw that the NFL game wasn’t as difficult as he was making it out to be.

Don’t think, just play.

“Lord, let me wake up from this”

He played well in his second season of 2012 until the Flacco Fling in a second-round playoff game pointed the index finger of blame directly at Moore. The Ravens tied the score in the final seconds of regulation, then won the game in overtime.

Funny thing happened after that Jacoby Jones touchdown catch for Baltimore, though. Before the angry mob could gather, Moore disarmed it by standing in front of his locker and taking full responsibility.

“He was so remarkable,” Nowana said. “I know he set a tone and an example to many. He said, ‘Hey, it’s right there in front of everybody.’ Why say something different? He said it, he owned up to it. He moved on. Of course he carried it for a while. But once he let it go, it was a brand new day.'”

The next day, Moore headed off to Florida to begin his offseason training. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink. In 2013, he was playing every snap at free safety for the Broncos when, in a home game against Kansas City — “November 17,” Mom said reflexively — Moore’s leg was inexplicably going numb.

Fox, who was watching at home as he recuperated from heart surgery, may have been the first to realize something was amiss.

“There was a run that broke out to the boundary,” Fox said. “And he ran after it, and I mean he had no juice. I was thinking, ‘Something’s wrong with him.’ “

Early the next morning, Moore underwent a life-threatening surgery to correct a circulation condition in his lower left leg called lateral compartment syndrome.

“I don’t think I told anybody else this, but when they gave me anesthesia, right before they gave that to me, I said, ‘Lord, let me wake up from this,’ ” Moore said. “Because they told me I could have passed, lost my leg. And as I was fading out, I was blinking, and I thought to myself, I hope this isn’t the last time I have eyes open.”

He woke up happy to be alive. But eventually came renewed disappointment: His season was finished. No playing in AFC championship victory. No playing in Super Bowl defeat.

The 2014 season opener last Sunday marked the Denver debuts of Talib, DeMarcus Ware, Emmanuel Sanders and T.J. Ward, reaffirmed the greatness of Manning and the unique talent of Julius Thomas.

And two interceptions for Moore in his first game back.

Now it’s on to the second game. Moore is in a hallway, watching a safety’s view shot of the Chiefs’ Alex Smith faking the handoff left, rolling right and hitting a wide-open running back in the flat. Smith must have completed 50 such passes last year.

“He’s good. I like him,” Moore says. “He’s a good quarterback.”