Raider Defense Goes It Alone in Loss : Pro football: It gives up only 169 yards, but the offense stays damp and cold as Chiefs win, 9-7.

The Raiders’ defense went more than a thousand miles for this showdown; their offense looked as if it pooped out somewhere around Wichita. The defense held the Kansas City Chiefs to three field goals and 169 yards. Disregarding the sleet factor, the offense sent up weather balloons and kept calling them passes.

The Raiders’ defense had the home crowd booing its own team, while the home team was winning. Greg Townsend was in the Chiefs’ backfield often enough to be accused of stealing the playbook. The Raiders’ offense could have used one.

“I had a dream last night that they kicked three field goals,” Howie Long said. “That’s the God’s honest truth. But I didn’t know what we were going to do on offense.”

Not much, it turned out, and that was enough for Kansas City to defeat the Raiders, 9-7, before 70,951 at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Raiders’ two-game lead in the AFC West was reduced to one during a defensive struggle made more grueling by a chilling rain and 37-degree temperatures.

The offenses were expected to pound it out on the ground and wait for turnovers. Not surprisingly, the only points manufactured without assistance--fumble, blocked punt, fumble--came on a 42-yard drive that ended with Nick Lowery’s third field goal with 11:58 remaining.

Yet on a cold, gray, treacherous day, one that suggested even more conservative thinking, the Raiders broke their axiom: Thou shalt not throw 30 passes in a game and expect to win. That’s in dry weather. Coach Art Shell spoke of the passage, with some with passion, earlier this season.

So it was unusual that the Raiders would die by the pass Sunday, with quarterback Jay Schroeder attempting 31 passes in deplorable conditions, against one of the league’s best secondaries.

“I had some balls I threw where I had no idea where it was going,” Schroeder said.

The Raiders thought they had exposed some mismatches, and set out to exploit them, rain or shine.

With 10:17 left, the Raiders took over on the Chiefs’ 49, trailing by two points. Schroeder threw two deep incompletions down the left sideline. On third and 10, he was nearly intercepted. The team’s million-dollar backfield, Bo Jackson and Marcus Allen, could not help.

“We were going to catch them off guard on that,” Schroeder said of the sequence. “We weren’t going to pound it. It just didn’t happen.”

Allen didn’t have an immediate reaction to the strategy.

“I’ve got to sit down and think about it,” he said.

Shell said at that point in the game he wasn’t thinking about crawling on the ground toward the possible winning field goal. He was going for the kill.

“I’m not going to question the calls we made,” he said. “You were going for the field goal. We were going for the touchdown to win the game.”

The series wasn’t the deciding factor, but it might have been. The Raiders had various mishaps and chances along the way.

In the first quarter, Kevin Porter raced untouched through the Raiders’ line and blocked Jeff Gossett’s punt attempt. Porter recovered at the 17 and, after losing one yard in three attempts, the Chiefs settled for a 36-yard Lowery field goal to take a 3-0 lead.

On the ensuing possession, two players making returns to Kansas City collided in the secondary. Jackson, a baseball man who plays here in summer, shot through the line and was met head-on by safety Deron Cherry, playing his first down, not of the game, but since returning from major knee surgery last December.

Cherry popped the ball loose from Jackson and Albert Lewis recovered at the Raider 23. The Chiefs’ offense retreated eight yards in three plays, forcing Lowery to stretch his leg on a 48-yard field goal with six seconds left in the first quarter.

You think Howie Long is the only guy that can have a premonition?

“Kevin Porter told me before the game that he had a dream about me last night,” Cherry said. “He said that he dreamed that on the first play I was going to hit Bo and he was going to fumble. You should have seen his face when it happened, because we had just talked about it in the locker room.”

While the Raider defense huffed and puffed to contain the Chiefs’ 500-pounder backfield of Christian Okoye and Barry Word, the offense squandered precious chances. Schroeder barely overthrew Willie Gault on a bomb in the third quarter. If Gault makes the catch, it’s a touchdown.

Early in the fourth, tight end Ethan Horton wasted a 25-yard reception into Kansas City territory by fumbling back to the Chiefs after being stripped of the ball by safety Lloyd Burress.

The Raiders’ only touchdown, a two-yard run by fullback Steve Smith with 14:52 remaining, came after Elvis Patterson recovered a fumbled punt at the Kansas City 16.

The Raiders kept asking their defense to plug the dam, but the continuous pounding of Word and Okoye took its toll.

The Raider defense, led by Townsend’s seven tackles and one sack, put up a fight.

In the fourth quarter, Townsend taunted the Chiefs’ sidelines, claiming he knew what plays were being sent into Kansas City’s huddle. Townsend had a dream too, right? No, he said he simply studied a lot of film.

Chief Coach Marty Schottenheimer thought something was up, and he jokingly offered Townsend the team’s game plan during one sideline exchange.

“He went to give me the clips,” Townsend said. “He handed them to me, I reached for it and he snatched it back. I’m no fool.”

Two plays the Raiders needed weren’t available.

With 3:08 left, they punted back to the Chiefs, needing one more defensive stand. It didn’t come. On third and one at the 26, Okoye broke outside for four yards at the two-minute warning. On third and one at the 39, it was Okoye again, killing the last Raider chance with another four-yard run.

The Chiefs gained only 124 rushing yards, and had no run of longer than 15 yards. But this was a game in which four-yard rushes could be devastating.

“That was the way you had to treat it,” Townsend said. “That’s the way it was today.”

Raider Notes

Bo Jackson finished third in Sunday’s running derby with 40 yards in 10 carries. The Chiefs’ Barry Word led all runners with 85 yards in 15 carries. Christian Okoye had 41 yards in 17 carries. Marcus Allen carried seven times for 24 yards. . . . Chief quarterback Steve DeBerg completed 10 of 21 passes for 59 yards. Raider quarterback Jay Schroeder completed 10 of 31 attempts for 139 yards with no touchdowns and one interception. Schroeder, the AFC’s top-rated passer entering the game, saw four of his passes dropped. . . . Bruce Wilkerson, activated from injured reserve Saturday, started at left tackle for Rory Graves, who was sidelined because of a strained heel.

Raider quarterback Steve Beuerlein was inactive for the sixth consecutive week after receiving a roster exemption for the first two weeks. He has not been in uniform this season. . . . The Raiders finished with 96 yards rushing. . . . The Raiders, who committed only six penalties in their previous two games, were penalized 11 times Sunday for 65 yards.

* CORNERED: Albert Lewis and Kevin Ross of the Chiefs helped shut down the Raiders. Chris Baker’s story, C14.