River Falls, Wis. ? The weather’s been great, the competition good, the team rounding into form. One week of training camp down and things couldn’t have gone much better for the Kansas City Chiefs.

OK, maybe there were a couple of times when the players took the competitive spirit of the new regime a little too seriously, but that’s going to happen. This is football, after all.

“We’ve got to have a competitive group of men out there every day. When it gets a little overboard, we have to remind them that the competition is great, but we are still a team and that we are still doing this together,” first-year coach Todd Haley said. “It’s a balancing act, but everything we do is to compete. Whether it’s in the weight room or wherever we are at, we are trying to create some competition.”

Haley has stressed the importance of the details throughout his first training camp as head coach, making players run when they jump offside, screaming at them when they drop passes or don’t wrap up the football all the way back to the huddle. He brought in three NFL referees over the weekend to drive home the point.

“They were in a lot of the drills, and we were trying to emphasize the point of not having penalties,” Haley said. “I told them to really be sticklers about anything they saw, so if they put a flag on the ground we could talk about it.”

Solid scrimmage

There were dropped passes, fumbles and interceptions. There also were some good defensive plays, touchdown runs and nice blocks.

The Chiefs’ scrimmage Saturday had just about everything a coach could expect in his team’s first live contact.

“For the first scrimmage, I had some nightmares about it,” Haley said. “Of all the things I thought could go wrong, I thought it was a smooth operation. Overall, I thought it was a good first scrimmage. We got a lot out of it. I know we will get a lot out of it as a staff.”

The scrimmage did nothing to clear up the No. 2 quarterback spot. Brodie Croyle and Tyler Thigpen each had some good moments, a few not-so-good moments. Of course, starter Matt Cassel and recently signed Matt Gonzalez weren’t much better either.

“Up and down for sure — all of them had some good plays and some not so good plays,” Haley said. “We can’t throw the ball to the defense, that is for sure.”

Jackson settling in

First-round draft pick Tyson Jackson, who signed on Friday, is still trying to catch up after missing the first six days of camp. The defensive end from LSU is in good shape — he passed the team’s conditioning test on the first try — and took reps with the first-team defense during Saturday’s intrasquad scrimmage.

Jackson has been leaning on Kansas City’s veterans to help make up the lost time.

“Definitely, I’ve got some good veterans around me,” he said. “The guys are really helping me out a lot, they’re teaching me the ropes already. It’s going to take some time, but I’m pretty confident in my teammates and my coaching to help me out a whole lot.”

Loose balls

LBs Mike Vrabel and Zach Thomas didn’t participate in the scrimmage and have spent time over the past few days in the conditioning area, riding exercise bikes instead of making tackles. Haley has said there will be times when he gives veteran players a break so they don’t wear down before the season starts. … Rookie K Ryan Succop made field goals of 58 and 53 yards in the scrimmage, but missed on a 33-yarder.