River Falls, Wis. ? A couple of things you should know about Kansas City Chiefs coach Herm Edwards:

One, he’s 53 years old.

Two, he has 1- and 2-year-old daughters.

When you have to chase around a couple of toddlers at Edwards’ age, you learn not to sweat the small stuff. And at the moment, Edwards considers star running back Larry Johnson’s training-camp holdout very small stuff.

“If he stays out for a while (in the preseason), it’s not going to matter,” Edwards said as he relaxed on a bench in the University of Wisconsin-River Falls hockey arena following a morning practice earlier this week. “At the end of the day, whether he comes in tomorrow or next week or next month, he’s going to carry the ball 25 times (a game).

“He knows the plays. He’s going to be in shape. He doesn’t have to get hit. He has to get in condition to run with the ball. But he can get that done. It’s no big deal. We’re just going to move on here and see what happens. I’m not in the negotiations, so I don’t know where that’s at. But I anticipate him being here (when the season starts).”

Johnson, who is coming off back-to-back 1,700-yard rushing seasons, and carried the ball an NFL-record 416 times last year, is entering the final year of his contract. He is scheduled to earn $1.7 million.

The former Penn State star wants more, a lot more. The Chiefs agree that he deserves a significant raise. They’ve been trying to sign him to a contract extension since the end of last season. But there still is a fairly large chasm between what Johnson feels he’s worth and what the Chiefs feel he’s worth.

Johnson reportedly is looking for a contract that would make him the highest-paid running back in the league. That honor currently is held by the Chargers’ LaDainian Tomlinson, who signed an eight-year, $60 million deal in August 2004 that included $21 million in guarantees and almost $26 million in the first three years of the deal.

But the salary cap has risen more than $20 million since then, and Johnson’s new agent, Alvin Keels, has correctly pointed out that Tomlinson would get a lot more today than he got three years ago. Hence, he feels Johnson shouldn’t be penned in by Tomlinson’s contract.

Johnson has suggested that he won’t play this season without a new contract, or at least not until the 10th week of the season when he could return and still get credit for a year of playing time. But that’s unlikely.

If he does that to the Chiefs, they already have told him that he can count on being designated as their franchise player next year. And probably the year after that as well, which would take him into his 30s and make it very difficult for him to cash in on a big, long-term contract. Especially with another 700 to 800 carries on the odometer. So, it would behoove Johnson and his agent to get a deal done.

“We’ve had continuing dialogue with his representative,” Chiefs president Carl Peterson said. “It was always my goal to get a contract done with Larry before we got into the last year of his contract. I’m still cautiously optimistic that it will work out. But we have to move ahead. We want people who want to be here.”