Kansas City, Mo. ? Priest Holmes definitely will miss Monday night’s game against New England, coach Dick Vermeil said Monday.

Holmes, who is third in the AFC with 892 yards rushing and leads with 90 points scored, sprained ligaments in his right knee against Tampa Bay on Nov. 7. In his absence Sunday, Derrick Blaylock ran for 186 yards in a 27-20 loss at New Orleans that dropped the Chiefs to 3-6.

“I would say he’s out. I think he’s made a little progress, but he’s got a long ways to go,” Vermeil said. “I don’t see him being any different than it was last week.”

Vermeil said he did not expect that Holmes would need surgery.

“That has not been expressed to me,” Vermeil said. “Those sprains, they give them degrees, and everybody comes back at a different tempo. He always comes back quickly. But he’s sprained that knee before, so there’s some other issues there as well. So we’ll just be patient with him. We won’t bring him back too fast, believe me.”

It could be a dispirited team that plays host to the defending Super Bowl champions. The Chiefs went 9-0 in their first nine games a year ago, but have just about eliminated themselves from postseason contention with a consistent pattern of penalties, turnovers, missed tackles and blown assignments.

Vermeil admitted his evaluation of the team, following last year’s 13-3 record, was far off target — perhaps more than any other time in a coaching career that included Super Bowl appearances with Philadelphia and St. Louis.

“I don’t believe in terms of my overall evaluation of where we were and what it was going to take to be what we ought to be, I’ve never been quite as far off as we are right now,” he said.

As for the playoffs, Vermeil is taking a realistic approach.

“I think in the real world of the National Football League, you’re out of it,” Vermeil said. “But there’s always the possibility. We don’t go week to week talking about playoffs. We talk about playing the game we’re getting ready to play.

“We’ve lost enough games to be considered not a candidate for the playoffs.”

To finish 10-6, the Chiefs would have to win their last seven games.

“The best we can do so far this year is two (straight wins). Right now our track record doesn’t indicate we can do that,” Vermeil sai.

Amazingly, the Chiefs had 497 yards of total offense against the Saints and held the ball for almost 36 minutes. But they also had 12 penalties for 94 yards and four turnovers.

The mood around Arrowhead Stadium is a far cry from last year when the Chiefs were 9-0 and people were wondering if an unbeaten season could be at hand.

“We were plus-18 (in giveaway/takeaway ratio) last year after nine games, and we’re minus-three or -four now,” Vermeil said.

“When the opponent’s football is bouncing around the turf, we never recover it. There have been 10 of them and we’ve recovered one. That will balance out, but sometimes it takes a number of games to do it.”