Kansas City, Mo. ? The Kansas City Chiefs are doing well enough with the ball — once they get it.

Coach Dick Vermeil would like to see them doing more to take it away from their opponents in the first place.

Through four games, Kansas City still is on the plus side in turnover margin, with six takeaways to one lost fumble and three interceptions.

“First off, you have to be conscious of creating them,” Vermeil said Tuesday. “You can knock them out. You’ve got to be aware of opportunities to knock them out.

“We coach it and talk about it, sell it and preach it,” he said. “But when the ball gets on the ground, the more guys you have coming to make the play, the better opportunity you have of getting that football.”

What bothers Vermeil the most is that opponents have fumbled seven times, but the Chiefs only have recovered one of those drops.

“The league (average) right now is 48 percent recovery of all the balls on the turf,” he said.

Vermeil planned to bring up that statistic — and a few others — to his players today, as they come off their bye week and get ready for Sunday’s game at Jacksonville.

“I go in tomorrow and the first thing I present is the giveaway-takeaway ratio,” he said. “Right now, for example, of the 61 games played in the league, minus turnover (ratios) won 11 of them. It doesn’t take much in the way of masters’ degrees to figure out you’d better play the game smart.”