Kansas City, Mo. ? After slugging it out with Buffalo to beat the Bills by a point, the Kansas City Chiefs awoke Sunday to find they gained no ground in the AFC West.

Denver (7-3), San Diego (7-3) and Oakland (6-4) also won on Sunday and remain ahead of the Chiefs (5-5) in what’s become one of the most competitive divisions in a parity-filled NFL.

Luckily for the Chiefs, they still play all three of their division rivals one more time, on the final three weekends of the regular season.

“If we can stay healthy and keep growing as a football team, we’ll be competitive,” coach Dick Vermeil said Monday. “But we have to keep getting better.”

Getting better seems to be the theme of the defense. Although it’s still ranked No. 32 in the 32-team league, the Bills, 49ers and Raiders have discovered how deceptive that figure can be.

Buffalo had only one TD Sunday’s 17-16 Chiefs’ victory, while the Bills’ tandem of Eric Moulds and Peerless Price, the No. 2 and 3 wide receivers in the league, totaled just eight catches for 76 yards.

“Going into it, they were the strongest duo and these guys have similar catches with similar numbers and nobody has really been able to contain them,” said Chiefs cornerback Eric Warfield.

“But we knew that Drew (Bledsoe) was a strong-armed guy and he liked to get the ball down the field. So we played a lot of zone to give them the short routes. But as long as you aren’t giving up a big play, that’s good. People are going to catch short routes and he dropped a lot of them off to the running backs and a lot of short routes to the wideouts, and that’s good.”

Two weeks ago, San Francisco scored only 17 points on what is supposed to be the leakiest defense in the NFL. A week before that, Oakland had only 10.

Once again this week, the Chiefs are officially listed No. 32 in total defense. But that’s including the first five weeks of the season and proves only that statistics can lie.

Vermeil said he’s seen the improvement coming around the past two Thursdays.

“Usually on Wednesday (practice) you’re still sore from Sunday,” Vermeil said. “By Thursday, you’ve worked out the soreness and you go back to work. Our two Thursdays the past two weeks have been back-to-back as good as I can remember as a head football coach.

“They demonstrated that Sunday.”

In the meantime, 13 of the 16 AFC teams are .500 or better, including the Chiefs. It will probably take every one of the six remaining regular-season games before the picture can be unscrambled.

“You can call it parity. I just call it tougher competition,” Vermeil said. “More teams are better. I don’t know if we’re good enough to be the dominating team. I know we’re good enough to beat anybody on any given Sunday.

“I think the dominate team in the National Football League will emerge over the next six games. There will end up being a dominant team, or two or three. But right now you’d have to say Denver and San Diego, both 7-3 records, are on the dominant side. How they handle the last six games will determine whether they remain dominant.”