Gary Kubiak is working with his QB to combine offenses. (Getty Images)

The Peyton Manning offense is a delicate ecosystem, one that has been developed over the 17 years the quarterback has been in the league. As he's grown older, Manning has essentially become a de facto offensive coordinator on the field, operating his system in very meticulous fashion.

Manning's team, the Denver Broncos, hired Gary Kubiak as their head coach this offseason, and Kubiak brings with him another very particular offensive style. Kubiak has long been famous for his zone-blocking running game, but his pass offense has operated very differently than the way most Manning-led teams have played, with lots of bootlegs and under-center snaps as opposed to shotgun, spread-type plays.

According to the team's official web site, the two, along with the rest of the offense and coaching staff, and working to merge the two systems together, rather than having one man run the other's offense entirely.

"Crossing the schemes, so to speak, was very, very easy. It was really more about verbiage than anything else. What I tried to do is the things that were very close, I tried to hang on to the verbiage that they had been talking here in the past, because I think that made it easier for the players," Kubiak said. "The things that were new, we hung on to the verbiage that I used throughout my career."

As for how the players are adjusting to some of the new realities and terms, "Peyton and the guys have adjusted to that very well. But I don't see that being very difficult. Ball is ball, and scheme -- how you go about it -- a lot of it's the same," Kubiak said. "We're just trying to make sure we all get on the same page with our verbiage. We've made a lot of progress, especially this first week."

Kubiak said the team will continue to operate out of the no-huddle on occasion, as Manning teams are known to do, but as Kubiak teams have rarely done. The Ravens squad Kubiak coordinated last season came out in no-huddle on only 2.41 percent of plays, per NFLSavant.com, while the Broncos did so nearly 10 times as often. Manning has long been one of the league's no-huddle maestros and Kubiak doesn't want to take that away from him. "We'll definitely be running the hurry-up offense," Kubiak said. "Peyton's been the best at the business at it for many years, so that's a strength that we'll stay with."

Meanwhile, one change they'll make is where Manning lines up to take the snap. "I think you'll see us under center a bit more," Offensive Coordinator Rick Dennison said. The Broncos were in shotgun on 73 percent of their offensive snaps last season, the fifth-highest mark in the league according to football outsiders. Kubiak's Ravens were in shotgun only 24.1 percent of the time, the NFL's lowest figure.

That change could signal a shift to a more run-oriented offense built around the talents of C.J. Anderson, who came on strong in the second half of last season. Dennison said the Broncos will run the ball "a lot more than perhaps they started out last year," indicating that they want to use Anderson to take some of the heat of Manning to carry the whole offense.