Shanahan says offense was chiefly to blame

ENGLEWOOD • After Sunday's 33-19 loss to Kansas City, Denver coach Mike Shanahan said the Broncos' run defense would have to go "back to the drawing board."

"I don't remember saying that, but I probably said it," Shanahan said Monday.

Even if he remembered saying it, by Monday afternoon he would have reneged. After watching the game again Shanahan defended his defense, which has given up more than 30 points in three straight games.

Denver gave up 198 rushing yards to Kansas City's Larry Johnson, but Shanahan said four turnovers and failures by the offense inside the 20-yard line were bigger reasons for the loss.

"People will point to the defense, and it's so far from the truth," Shanahan said. "You turn the football over four times and you're one for four in the red zone, you're not going to win football games."

The Broncos rank 30th in yards allowed and 31st in points allowed. Shanahan said the statistics looked bad against Kansas City, but they were misleading.

After Johnson gained 65 of the Chiefs' 84 yards on their first drive, Kansas City had nine straight drives of 38 yards or less. Five of the drives gained fewer than 10 yards.

The defense gave in during the fourth quarter, when the Chiefs scored two touchdowns and a field goal on their final three drives.

"When you go against a guy like Johnson and you give up a couple big plays and then all the sudden you take a look at those stats, but those are not always indicative of how we played," Shanahan said.

Although Shanahan absolved his defense for most of the blame, he wasn't completely pleased about the performance.

"We've got to play better," Shanahan said. "You still don't want to give up those plays in the fourth quarter, you've still got to make them. But we can work on that. Most of them were some missed tackles and missed assignments, and Larry Johnson seems to do that to people every once in a while. We've got some work to do but it's not quite as bad as it looked."

The players said they also saw some positives, but they weren't going to dwell on that because they lost.

"We didn't come out and do the things we were supposed to do," safety Marquand Manuel said.

The Chiefs had lost 12 straight games dating back to last year. Although many players said after the game that they didn't take Kansas City lightly, the Broncos were confident.

"We went through the game, as time went on, kind of in disbelief," tight end Tony Scheffler said. "With as much success as we had, kind of not showing up yesterday was hard to take."