Last modified: Monday, September 8, 2008 2:30 AM EDT Ty Warren (94) knocks the helmet off of Chiefs running back Larry Johnson (27). (Staff photo by Keith Nordstrom) O'Neal there when it counted BY MARK FARINELLA SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO - As it is with any newcomer to a team, Deltha O'Neal had his ups and downs in his first game as a New England Patriot. But he never stopped playing hard, as one should expect from a nine-year pro veteran, and he proved that point when the Patriots' 17-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs was thrust into doubt as time wound down. Damon Huard, in at quarterback for the Chiefs with Brodie Croyle having suffered a shoulder injury, caught the Patriots in a blitz with 1:09 left to play and uncorked a long pass down the middle of the field just as the Patriots' Lewis Sanders plowed into him. Devard Darling made the grab and went 68 yards, from the Chiefs' 27 to the Patriots' 5 - and he might have scored if O'Neal hadn't turned on the jets and dropped him with a nice open-field tackle. "He just made a play," O'Neal said. "Hats off to him, he did a wonderful job and put them into scoring position. I was just thinking, 'Get him down so we don't go into overtime. Get him down, get him down. We can stop them.' Once I got him down we had four downs to try to stop them." The Patriots used every one of those downs to best advantage. First, Huard tried to hit Dwayne Bowe in the left corner of the end zone, but Bowe couldn't come down with the catch. Then, Richard Seymour dropped Larry Johnson for no gain at the 5, with Mike Vrabel sealing the deal as Johnson lost his footing. Huard missed connections with tight end Tony Gonzalez on the third-down play, and finally on fourth down, he sent Bowe to the right side, but O'Neal had the passing angle sealed off and the former Patriot's pass sailed wide to the right, O'Neal having made it impossible for Huard to get the ball to his receiver. "You know, that's just a gut-check," said O'Neal, the former Bronco and Bengal. "It's the last play, fourth down, you know they're going to pass it. Nine times out of 10 it's either going to go to Gonzalez or Bowe. Bowe was on my side. I was thinking, 'This ball is coming to me, this is a gut-check. I've got to play my part and play my position.'" Given the adversity the Patriots faced at the beginning of the game, with the loss of quarterback Tom Brady to a knee injury, the goal-line stand at the end had a reinforcing and therapeutic value to it. "The way things went in the red zone in the latter part of the game was good for us, just because of the way we played in the red zone last year, which wasn't so good until the later part of the season," defensive end Ty Warren said. "But it was definitely good to get off with a good start." "It was definitely an issue last year," said safety Rodney Harrison (team-high 14 tackles) of the red-zone defense, "and is something we focused on in the off-season and training camp. "If you want to win close games you have to step up in the red zone," he added, "and I think we did a good job today."