Herman Edwards’ Chiefs may have their hands full today.

AP / LENNY IGNELZI

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Herm Edwards is midsentence when he changes the subject. Someone asked him about the pass rush, but that’s a secondary concern to Edwards now. Not when there’s something else on his mind.

“You’ve got to be able to stop the run if you’re going to sack the quarterback,” said Edwards, the Chiefs’ coach. “We preach that to our defense.”

Without an effective rush defense, sacks are hard to come by. And when sacks don’t happen, the Chiefs’ defense isn’t as effective as it will need to be against an offense such as New England’s.

Kansas City had four exhibition games to warm up for today’s regular-season opener. The Chiefs tweaked the secondary, shifted young players into the defensive line and struggled to find consistency at linebacker. All the movement and inexperience allowed opponents to average 4.9-yards per rush against the Chiefs, and that was ranked 28th among 32 teams during the preseason.

Sure, rookie tackle Glenn Dorsey would say, the Chiefs’ reserves played most of the time and might have made the rush defense look worse than it was. Then again, even the Chiefs’ starters are young and haven’t yet proved they have established the chemistry Edwards wants to see sooner instead of later.

Today’s starting lineup will include at least four defensive players in their first or second NFL seasons, and that means some of the young players on this unit will have to take responsibility. Dorsey admitted he’s short on experience, but he thinks it’s up to him to anchor that interior line and make progress at stopping the run.

“It’s my job,” Dorsey said. “You can’t let people run the ball. You let people run the ball, and you’re going to have a long day.”

He said coaches remind players every day that the best defenses are the stingiest against the run. The Chiefs have tried to improve, drafting run stoppers the last two years, Tank Tyler in 2007 and Dorsey this past April.

Like many of the young Chiefs, the interior linemen are adjusting to their new responsibilities and have suffered some hiccups. And it might take time as the youngsters settle in and become comfortable. Until then, statistics such as this might become more glaring: Tyler and Dorsey combined for five tackles during the preseason; 21 other Chiefs defenders had at least five tackles by themselves.

The Chiefs want consistency, and Edwards wants better results. The coach has spent the last two weeks reminding players that the Chiefs simply can’t allow teams to run for big yards.

“You always want to pound on the quarterback,” linebacker Demorrio Williams said. “But top priority, that’s stopping the run. Everybody’s got to be in their gaps, everybody’s got to do their jobs, and it’ll take care of itself.”

So now that the run defense conversation is out of the way, Edwards can talk about the Chiefs’ pass rush again. But as he’s been telling players, stopping the run had to come first.

“If we can get some other guys to win one-on-one battles,” Edwards said, “then the sacks will come. First you stop the run; then you put them in situations where they know they’ve got to throw. Then your ability to sack the quarterback goes up.”