Kansas City, Mo. ? As if being 0-3 weren’t bad enough, one of Kansas City’s top players missed practice Thursday because of an injury that coaches had never even heard of before.

Dante Hall only could stand on the sideline all day with an ice pack on his painfully infected lower lip. The All-Pro kick returner had stitches taken after getting the injury early in last Sunday’s 24-21 loss to Houston.

“His lip was infected, pretty well puffed up,” Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil said. “It hurt to even jog, bouncing that lip.”

Vermeil said Hall was taking antibiotics and probably would be ready for Monday night’s game at Baltimore, where Kansas City won, 17-10, last year with the help of Hall’s 97-yard kickoff return.

Nevertheless, not once in a coaching career that began in 1959 has Vermeil ever had a player miss time because of an infected lip.

“We always talk about, ‘Do something for the first time,'” Vermeil said. “That’s it.”

But there also was good news on the injury front for the winless Chiefs. Defensive end Vonnie Holliday and cornerback William Bartee each practiced at full speed.

“We’ll see what happens. But I feel good,” Holliday said. “We’ll see how the week goes.”

Another first for Vermeil is starting a season 0-3. Everyone understands a fourth straight loss would almost certainly doom the Chiefs to also-ran status following last year’s 13-3 campaign.

“You’ve got to love the challenge,” defensive end Eric Hicks said. “Why not make it the hardest possible stage you could have to get your first win? We’re going to go in there fully expecting to win. We need to win. We’ve got to shut down No. 31 to do it.”

No. 31 is Jamal Lewis, last year’s NFL rushing champion who was held to a relatively minor output of 115 yards by Kansas City a year ago. But a year ago, the Chiefs did not have a run defense that already had given up career-best days to two different running backs in three games.

“We were able to contain him last year and not let him get on a roll,” Hicks said. “He had about 116 yards rushing. I don’t think we can let that happen again. We need to try to hold him to 70 or 80 and stay in our gap.”

The Chiefs are practicing with Lewis in mind.

“He’s a very strong runner,” linebacker Monty Beisel said. “We don’t want to create seams. That’s the one thing we’re working on this week is shutting down the run lanes and keeping their offensive line from sifting up through our second level.”

After taking two days off, the Chiefs came back to work Thursday with a high-spirited practice.

“Judging by the practice we just had, you’d never know we were 0-3,” Hicks said. “You’d think we were 3-0. You attribute that to coach Vermeil and the coaching staff. They always have us up and ready to go. He must be the best motivational speaker in the world, because we’re always up for a challenge.”