But at least the Chiefs will be getting back a player who once was a critical part of their offense, the unit that will have to excel if Kansas City is to keep Sunday's game close.

Larry Johnson will return this week from a four-game absence -- three inactive games imposed by the Chiefs coupled with a one-game league suspension as a result of his off-field brushes with the law. Johnson faces two municipal court charges of simple assault and one recently filed civil suit stemming from two separate confrontations with women at Kansas City clubs in the past year.

His return may or may not come at a good time for the Chiefs.

The good part in the timing is that the Chiefs are hurting somewhat at running back, though not nearly as much as they are defensively.

Top backup Kolby Smith is out for the year with a knee injury, and rookie Jamaal Charles had only three carries after injuring an ankle against San Diego last week. With rookie returner Dantrell Savage the only completely healthy runner on the roster, Johnson's return is certainly timely.

But the Chiefs offense has changed considerably since Johnson last played on Oct. 5 in a 34-0 meltdown against Carolina. A game, by the way, in which he managed only 2 yards on seven carries just one week after he gashed Denver for 198.

The Chiefs are using more spread offensive looks and shotgun formations to accommodate new quarterback Tyler Thigpen, a spread quarterback in college at Coastal Carolina. They've not abandoned the running game, to be sure. But in their last three games during which they scored 70 points -- as opposed to 75 total in the previous six -- they ran only 16 times against the Jets and 15 times last week in San Diego.

The Jets game was decided in the final minute, the Chargers contest when Kansas City failed to get the potential game-winning points on a two-point conversion with 23 seconds remaining.

The Chiefs seem to have found a new offensive chemistry in the time Johnson was away, and you have to wonder how his return might affect it.

When healthy, Johnson was the face of the Kansas City offense. The Chiefs hoped his strong running would set up the pass, but Johnson clearly was not the same runner he was before his season-ending foot injury at the midpoint of the 2007 campaign.

Today, the Chiefs are more inclined to pass as a means of setting up the run. Thigpen threw a season-high 41 passes against the Chargers last week, and the Chiefs are content to let him fling it.

How Johnson will accept this new philosophy will be worth watching.

"We're doing more things in the shotgun because we felt that's how we could move the football," explained coach Herm Edwards. "We didn't have enough runs out of the shotgun early on, but now we've added some. We didn't start out that way, but we've had to adjust our play to what (Thigpen) can do. That quarterback is kind of important."

For Johnson, that means adjusting to a one-back offense in the shotgun, which will affect some of the runs he once made behind a fullback with a quarterback taking snaps behind center.

"We'll still run plays with the quarterback under center," Edwards noted. "But we've added things from the shotgun that we like, and which help us move the ball. He'll have to do some things different."

"Hopefully he comes back with renewed energy and a chip on his shoulder like the Larry of old," said guard Brian Waters, Kansas City's offensive captain.

"We're not asking him to make up for anything," Waters added. "We just want him to come in here and work hard and add to what we've already started. We can't do anything about the last four weeks; he has to deal with that. When he comes on the football field, we expect him to be the talented player we've seen before.

SERIES HISTORY: 9th meeting. The series is tied at 4-4 in this rarely contested series. The Saints won the last meeting 27-20 in 2004 at the Superdome. Kansas City won two meetings prior to that, but they were in 1994 and 1997.