Peyton Manning was wooed by the Chiefs early in the offseason, after the four-time MVP had been cut loose by Indianapolis and before he signed a five-year deal with Denver.

On Sunday, he showed exactly why Kansas City was after him.

Manning threw for 285 yards and two touchdowns, and led the Broncos down the field in the final minutes when the Chiefs were frantically trying to get a stop, setting up a field goal that sealed a 17-9 victory and their sixth consecutive win.

It allowed Manning to break a tie with his boss and Broncos vice president John Elway with his 149th win as a starting quarterback, trailing only Brett Favre (186) for most in NFL history.

”Peyton Manning is a Hall of Famer,” Chiefs linebacker Derrick Johnson said. ”We played pretty good as a defense most of the game, but he made a few plays, one or two more plays than we’d like him to make, and he came up with a victory.”

Naturally, Manning was quick to pass the praise to someone else.

In this case, it was Knowshon Moreno, who stepped into the starting lineup after Willis McGahee landed on injured reserve this week and ran for 85 yards. Manning also handed out kudos to Jacob Tamme and Demaryius Thomas, who were on the receiving end of his touchdown throws.

”I’ve got to tip my hat to Knowshon Moreno,” Manning said. ”He stepped up today and did a heck of a job. Really an impressive effort by him.”

Not so much by the Chiefs offense.

Jamaal Charles ran for 107 yards, but the Chiefs (1-10) were done in by penalties, missed opportunities and a conservative approach that has not yielded a touchdown since the first quarter against Pittsburgh on Nov. 12, a span of more than 11 quarters and 173 minutes.

They could only manage field goals by Ryan Succop for the second straight game.

”It’s really about stopping the run,” Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey said. ”If you can limit that run game, you put the weight on their passing game, which hasn’t been that great this year.”

Quinn was 13 of 25 for 126 yards and an interception.

”Hats off to our defense,” Broncos coach John Fox said. ”We struggled a bit against the run, but they’re a very good run team. … Something we work very hard on is the red area, and holding them to three field goals was a key in the game.”

Kansas City actually established an early lead for the third straight game on Succop’s first-quarter field goal, and seemed to be outplaying Denver (8-3) the entire first half.

They had a chance to go ahead 10-0 when they faced fourth-and-2 at the Denver 4, but Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel elected to kick another field goal against a team that had scored at least 30 points in five straight games, drawing a chorus of boos from the crowd.

”I thought points on the board were important,” Crennel said by way of explanation.

Problem was that touchdowns trump field goals.

On the Broncos’ final drive of the half, Manning completed five straight passes before finding Tamme on third-and-goal from the Kansas City 7 with 18 seconds left. The touchdown catch, on which the tight end dragged safety Eric Berry into the end zone, gave the Broncos a 7-6 lead and wiped out all the hard work that Kansas City had put in over the first 25 minutes.

Denver’s Matt Prater missed his second field goal try of the game early in the third quarter, and Succop’s 49-yarder gave Kansas City its first second-half lead of the season.

But once again, a failure to get into the end zone proved fatal.

Manning, who surpassed 3,000 yards passing earlier in the day, rode the legs of Moreno into Chiefs territory, and that’s when he lobbed a pass over nickelback Jalil Brown and into the hands of Thomas for the go-ahead, 30-yard touchdown reception late in the third quarter.

”That was a great catch down the sideline against tight coverage,” Manning said.

The Chiefs twice had chances to overcome the 14-9 deficit late in the fourth, but they failed to move the ball after taking over at their own 37. After getting it back, Crennel chose to punt on fourth-and-6 at the Broncos 47 after a series of penalties ruined the drive.

It was their last chance to retake the lead.

Denver tacked on a field goal by Prater in the closing seconds, and after Jacksonville held on to beat Tennessee, the Chiefs were left as the league’s only one-win team.

”We’re frustrated every week. Every time we get a loss, it’s frustrating,” Charles said. ”I don’t know when it’s going to stop, but hopefully we can did deep down in our souls and find a way to get out of this.”

— Associated Press —

The Bengals punt team trotted onto the field midway through the first quarter Sunday, shortly after the Chiefs had kicked a field goal to take a rare lead in a game.

All the momentum was going Kansas City’s way.

Then the snap landed in the hands of Cedric Peerman, who was lined up to protect punter Kevin Huber. The running back raced around the side of the line, the perfectly executed fake catching the Chiefs napping, and 32 yards later gave Cincinnati a first down.

New life, too. The Bengals would convert another fourth down on the same series, and Andy Dalton would hit A.J. Green with a short touchdown pass to cap it off, giving Cincinnati a lead it would never relinquish in a 28-6 victory on Sunday.

”It was a momentum-swinger,” running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis said. ”That’s the thing about the NFL – most of the games are decided by a few points. When you get a momentum-swinger like that where you punch them right in the gut, it swings the momentum going your way.”

Dalton wound up with 230 yards passing, including another TD throw to Mohamed Sanu, and also scampered for a score. Green had six catches for 91 yards, and Green-Ellis bullied his way for 101 yards and a touchdown on the ground as the Bengals (5-5) won their second straight.

Cincinnati plays its next four games against teams that began the day with losing records.

None of them are as bad as the Chiefs, though.

Jamaal Charles had 87 yards rushing for Kansas City (1-9), but that was the only highlight for a team that lost its seventh straight amid a gloomy backdrop at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Chiefs’ once-raucous home venue was only about half-full most of the game, and a good portion of those who showed up were dressed in black – a grass roots effort organized by fans who have been trying to pressure team ownership to clean out the front office.

”I focus on the game. I don’t get into the crowd,” Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel said.

Perhaps he should have let his eyes wander.

What happened on the field couldn’t have put him in a good mood.

Dalton and Green shredded Crennel’s porous pass defense, Ellis pounded away at a front line that had played better of late, and a middle-of-the-road Cincinnati defense looked like an iron curtain against a Kansas City offense that has been utterly inept.

The result: The Bengals are back to .500, and eying back-to-back postseason appearances for only the second time in franchise history, while the Chiefs have dropped seven straight games in a single season for the first time since Oct. 5-Nov. 23, 2008.

”We felt like we gave a couple of games away,” said Dalton, who had four TD passes in last week’s win over the Giants. ”Now we’ve got momentum and we’ve got to keep it going. We’ve had two great wins, full-team wins, with everybody doing their part, and we’ve got to keep that going.”

The Chiefs struck first for the second straight week, turning several nice runs by Charles into a 34-yard field goal by Ryan Succop, before reality set in again.

That’s when the Bengals pulled off their faked punt, converted another fourth down and then saw Dalton cap the drive with a 5-yard fade pass to Green, who managed to stab the ball with one hand and then slap both feet into the end zone before falling out of bounds.

Peyton Hillis fumbled on the Chiefs’ ensuing possession, their league-leading 31st turnover this season, but they dodged trouble when Mike Nugent missed a 50-yard field-goal attempt.

Cincinnati made it 14-3 later in the second quarter when Dalton fooled the entire Kansas City defense on a perfectly executed naked bootleg. The 1-yard TD run came on fourth down after a video review showed that Gresham had been stopped just shy of the goal line on a 10-yard catch.

The Bengals’ most impressive drive of the game came after they forced the Chiefs to punt for the third straight time, an 11-play, 78-yard masterpiece in which they faced third down once.

Ellis capped that one off with a short touchdown plunge for a 21-3 lead.

Matt Cassel deftly led the Chiefs to a field goal in the closing seconds of the half, but Crennel elected to put backup Brady Quinn into the game at quarterback to start the third quarter.

Cassel sustained a concussion earlier this season, and then lost his job to Quinn, who was active for the first time since sustaining his own concussion Oct. 28 against Oakland.

Quinn didn’t fare much better leading the Kansas City offense, and the Bengals tacked on Sanu’s touchdown catch in the fourth quarter to seal the win.

”We did good things in all three phases,” Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said. ”We knew it was going to be a grind. We can’t worry about things around us. We just have to take care of us.”

— Associated Press —

The Kansas City Chiefs announced on Wednesday that the club has signed tight end DeMarco Cosby to the team’s practice squad.

Cosby (6-3, 245) originally entered the NFL as an undrafted rookie free agent with the St. Louis Rams in 2011 where he spent time on the club’s practice squad roster. He signed with the Green Bay Packers on July 30, 2012 but was released before the start of the regular season.

Cosby played collegiately at the University of Central Missouri, starting 14 games as a senior, hauling in 71 passes for 970 yards (13.7 avg.) and 10 TDs, all of which set single-season tight end records for the Mules. He finished his career as Central Missouri’s all-time leader among tight ends in receptions (141), receiving yards (2,146) and receiving TDs (20). Cosby prepped at Lincoln Prep High School in Kansas City, Mo.

— Chiefs Media Relations —